Quilt in a Day Forums

I have ripples of fabric! I'm pinning the quilt with my bordera to the backing and it won't lay flat besides taking all the borders off does anyone how I can get this to lay flat?

No - I think that you may have to take off the borders and re-size them - they sound like they may be too long and or wide for your top -

Before taking them off - measure the top - inside the border area - measure top to bottom on each side and in the middle from top to bottom - keep track of these numbers - then do the same on the sides and in the middle side- see if these numbers from the top to the bottom are the same - if they are not - see which way the top is off. Same goes for the sides.

Using these numbers find the average length and width of the top - cut your borders to fit that average number for each of the sides of your quilt - this will keep your border on the outside flat and straight - you can tweak just a little bit of top to even them out.

Be very careful as you press the border too - you can cause stretch in the fabric

Hope that this may help you - glad to help if you need further questions
Jana

Did you cut your fabric on the bias? It sounds like you may have.
This would bring ripples. Cut the borders (unless specified differently) from the width of the fabric. Sometimes you have to take out some of the squares to square them up exactly. It is time consuming. Good luck.

That is hard. I usually have ripples by the time I get to the borders, because my difficulty with getting things nice and square seem to magnify as they move outward.

Are you borders mitered? I have found that I calculated the angles wrong before and adjusting the coner seams has helped a lot.

What Jana wrote about measuring for the borders is really important. I have tended to use the slap some strips on and trim them to the same width as the sides method - and It does not help with keeping things squared and flat.

Be careful, you need to measure your quilt. As you piece your quilt may grow or shrink. Just because a pattern states that the boarders should be a specific size, that would be in a perfect world. If you don't correct this now you will run into problems if you are going to have your quilt machine quilted. You could end up with folds in your quilting if it doesn't lay flat.

I'm a longarm quilter and ruffled borders is the #1 problem I have with some customer quilts. Do you take a length of border, put it right sides together, sew to the end, then cut it off? If so, that's the wrong thing to do! Measure your quilt, then measure the border, cut the border and then pin to the quilt. With a big quilt, I use a safety pin in the middle of the border and another safety pin in the middle of the side of the quilt I'm working on, and then two more pins in the middle of that. Match the safety pins and then ease in the fullness. The reason why the borders ruffle when you slam on a chunk of border, sew, and then cut the excess off is because your often pulling on the border piece, stretching it as you go. So often there are several borders in a quilt, so the more borders you put on, the more stretching occurs when they're applied the wrong way. I hope this helps and isn't confusing how I explained it. If you have any questions, PM me, okay? - Nancy