Mitered Corners

I love mitered corners on multiple strip borders, although butted borders with cornerstones are nice, too.  In a small table top quilt I am currently making, the mitered corners echo the corners in the quilt block itself

However, getting everything to line up precisely isn’t always easy.  Borrowing on a technique used by Sharon Schamber, I have found an easy way to get the corners to match as well as possible.

•   Sew your strips together.
•  Sew the longer side strips to your quilt using a ¼ inch seam.  HOWEVER, stop and start ¼ inch from each end.  Backtracking at each end is recommended.  Press the seam towards the border or open, as desired.  Leave a tail of at least 1.5 times the strip width at each end. 
• Sew the shorter side strips on, starting and stopping right at the point where you ended the sewing on the previous strips.  Again, leave at least 1.5 strip width tails at each end.
• Lay one end of your quilt out of your pressing surface. 
•  Fold under the top strip at the corner to form the miter, making sure that everything matches the way you want it to – it may take a bit of futzing.

Initial positioning of the miter

•  Press this fold, using starch to make sure you get a sharp crease.

Iron in the crease

•   Fold the top piece back and run a fine bead of Elmer’s or Glue Baste It along the very edge of the fold.  Lay the piece back down and adjust it into place.  

Add a bead of glue to the crease edge

• Press again – this sets the glue.
•  I then pin the ends just to make sure nothing shifts when I move to the machine.

•   Open the top part to expose the crease and sew right in it, stopping (or starting) right at the corner where the borders seams meet. 

Open the fold and sew along the crease

 

• After checking that all is well, trim the tails to ¼ inch.  Press the seam open – you are going to have to open the part that’s glued – spraying a bit of water will help with this.

Final corner