February Free Pattern....Love Blooms

Love Blooms
36” x 36”
Designed by Heidi Pridemore

Love is in the air this month! I thought the best way to show my love for the new GO! Qube Mix & Match 6” Block Set was to create a sweet table topper that features the blocks I designed with the assorted dies from the set. I fell in love with these sweet focal fabrics from P&B and added some of my own basics to make a spring topper perfect for our table this season.

For the topper design, I drew my inspiration from focus fabrics. Using the dies in the GO! Qube Mix & Match 6” Block Set, I designed a sweet tulip block for the corners and a pieced rose bud block to go between the tulips. It was so nice to have all the dies I needed in one set and using the AccuQuilt GO! Big Electric Fabric Cutter with the dies the made cutting this project a breeze.

This month’s featured dies are the GO! Qube Mix & Match 6” Block Set (55775) and GO! Square 8” Finished (55058). The pattern for Love Blooms is now available at our website for download here. The pattern will have all instructions to make this Lovely Topper.

This time I am sharing with you how to do a mitered corner for a border. When working with a directional strip for the borders, the extra effort of mitering the corners adds a nice finish to the project.

For the mitered borders, make sure to cut the same printed pattern for each of the four borders so the design matches in the corners. In this case I made sure I fussy cut the strip with the birds on the same side of the flowers. Also make sure that when you are adding the borders to the quilt top that the strip is in the same direction on all four sides of the quilt.

When cutting the borders for mitered corners, the border strip needs to be longer than a traditional border. You need to figure the size of the quilt after the borders would be added and then add 4” to the length to give yourself some “wiggle” room.

To position the first border on the quilt top, fold the border in half to find the center of the strip. Align the center of the border strip with the center of one side of the quilt top, aligning the raw edges. Pin the border in place.

Start sewing the border to the quilt top, starting the ¼” from the top edge and stopping ¼” from the bottom edge.  Do not press borders until you have added all four borders and  completed the mitered corners.

Now that the first border is sewn in place, it needs to be folded out of the way before sewing the next border onto the quilt top. The photos above show how to fold the border out of the way. Once it is folded, pin through the layers together with a straight pin to keep the border securely folded

Repeat to add all four borders to the quilt top. Now let's move on to mitering the corners

First, fold the quilt top in half on one diagonal with the sewn borders fold down towards the center of the quilt top. Using a ruler with a 45 degree line, align the the 45 degree line with the bottom edge of the border and place top edge of the ruler at the end of sewn seam. Using a wash out or iron out pen, draw a diagonal line from the sewn seam to the bottom of the border.

Sew on the drawn diagonal line starting at the end of the sewn seam and sew out to the edge of the border. Open up the corner to make sure everything has lined up correctly. Then trim the excess fabric leaving a 1/4” seam allowance.

Once you have mitered all four corners, you are ready to press the borders and corners. Now you know the secrets to a perfect mitered corner. I hope these tips inspire you to try a mitered border on your project!

And finally, here is the Love Blooms topper top ready for quilting! 

Make sure to visit my blog each month where I will share with you some tips and tricks on cutting and assembling of the project of the month along with posting the free pattern on our website The Whimsical Workshop You can also see our pattern and post at www.accuquilt.com

Until next time…..

Heidi