Still More March/April Highlights

We focused on Sewing Beautiful Borders in the March/April ’12 issue of Quiltmaker. Hidden Treasure is a design by Carolyn Beam, QM’s Creative Editor, featuring an idea she’s been playing with for a long time.

Hidden Treasure designed and made by Carolyn Beam

She takes elements from the quilt center and uses them to create a border.

The result is a feeling of integration and continuity—Carolyn’s borders never look like an afterthought.

(By the way, this is one of the ideas Carolyn will touch on in her classes during Quiltmaker’s Block Party in Williamsburg, August 2–4. She’s a great teacher and you’ll learn a lot!)

Minnesota Homewarming, designed by Pat Speth

Another quilt featuring interesting borders in this issue is Minnesota Homewarming by Pat Speth. This quilt is actually made of mostly borders.

It’s an opportunity to enrich your piecing skills because each border must fit precisely with its neighbors.Wouldn’t that be a great project?!

If you have trouble making pieced borders work, you’ll want to read “A Perfect Fit,” an article I wrote for this issue. It gives helpful info on how to be sure your borders are the right size to fit your quilt center perfectly.

Calico Clothworks has been updated for this issue in Timeless Treasures fabrics.

Calico Clockworks is a classic QM pattern we’ve updated for this issue in fresh fabrics from Timeless Treasures. This quilt was presented in our very first issue, Spring/Summer ’82. Like all the quilts in that issue, the original quilt and piecing diagram were hand drawn.

The instructions gave templates for cutting out all of the patches with scissors and also called for set-in seams. Now we’ve simplified the block to use rotary cut patches; we’ve eliminated the set-in seams, too.

This quilt is a good example of extending a block design out into the borders.

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I hope you’ll pick up this issue and spend some time looking over all it has to offer!