Sharonquilts

First of all, referencing another thread on "curses", who put the curse on me "May your measurements be wrong after cutting even though you measured 3 times." LOL The width matches.

So the problem: My backing is longer than my quilt top. Since I have a border on the back, I can't simply cut it down (see photo where I've pinned it back) because the side border looks too wide. The easiest way I can see to fix this is to partially remove the borders on the back on 1 end, trim the stripe fabric, and reattach the borders. Any other advice?

Also, if you saw my previous post, I decided to go with white sashing across. After cutting a few green sashing strips and auditioning those, it was too much. Strangely enough, it seemed to take the focus away from the blocks...made the blocks look too narrow.

In the photo one end of the back is flipped to the front in case it looks confusing.

Thanks,
Sharon

Edit: The stripe pcs pinned on the right indicate how the binding would look

dunster

I am more than a little confused. Normally you would want the back to be bigger than the front in all directions, otherwise it is too difficult to keep them exactly matching while quilting.

joe'smom

As dunster says, you want the back larger than the front -- by about 5" on each side for ease of quilting. So if you want to end up with a border on the back of the quilt, you'd have to start with a border the final desired width, plus the 5" on each side. But it might be tricky to get it centered just right.

That stripe binding would look fabulous cut on the bias.

Sharonquilts

Well shoot. I'm really "out of it" on this one. I usually do make the back larger. Now I've got to see if I have enough fabrics to widen and lengthen. This did turn into somewhat of an improvisational quilt as I worked on it and obviously, I didn't think things through very well. Tough lesson learned.

I may be running too short on my stripe fabric to cut binding on the bias ... but agree it would look nice.

Thanks so much!

dunster

I usually find that about 3" all around is enough, even on the longarm, but I would prefer 4", especially on the sides.