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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Using Border Fabric

Here's a way to use directional border fabric in a string block as the center strip.
I used scissors to cut the paisley print fabric you see into 13 1/2 inch strips and placed each one down the middle diagonally on 12 1/2 inch foundations of muslin.
I then did the sew, flip and press method, sewing darker fabrics of varied widths on one side of the paisley fabric and lighter tone-on-tones on the opposite side. 

Here you can see what four block look like with the paisley seeming to give a framed look.

 Here is the final quilt top measuring roughly 80 inches square.  I love this look and now always look for border fabrics in a different way.

11 comments:

  1. Love your tutorial on using directional border fabric Rhonda! What a great idea and really neat look to the blocks. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Elegant look. Way to dress up our plain string blocks!!!

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  3. wow! that consistent print in the centre strip makes a scrappy quilt look planned. thanks for posting this.

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  4. This was interesting, and something I hadn't thought of before. Oh, the possibilities.....

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  5. Very cool idea! I hadn't considered that before, but what a great variation on a string block.

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  6. You are welcome everyone. Let's keep those sewing machines humming!!

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  7. I like the stripe center idea! Looks great!

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  8. Never would have thought of this--Love it!

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  9. Beautiful blocks with the paisley print like that!

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