If you’ve never found a good way to get an accurate mitered corner in a quilt border, try this method and see if it works as well for you as it does for me.

1. Cut the border fabric long enough so that the short end of the border fabric goes at least as far as the border on each adjacent side will be. So if your border will finish at 7 1/2″ wide, the border fabric needs to be 15″ wider than the unfinished quilt top.
2. Start by stitching the border onto the quilt, matching the centers and stopping 1/4″ from the raw edge of the quilt. Backstitch. Make sure the stitching just meets at the mark 1/4″ from the corners.
3. Press the seams toward the borders.
4. At one corner, fold the border down so it lays on the inside of the quilt and the short end butts up against, or goes beyond the border on the adjacent side.

Fold one border onto the quilt and adjacent border

5. Find the corner where the 2 border pieces meet on the outside of the quilt and pin right into the corner.

Pin right at the corner where the borders cross on the outside edge

6. Fold back the top border between the pin and the place where the stitching lines meet at the corner of the quilt. Usea ruler to check the angle. It should be 45 degrees. With a striped fabric like this one, you can also line up the stripes so they are straight. I can barely see the fold in this photo because the lines match so well. It shows a little on the far right. Press to crease the miter.

Fold back at 45 degree angle, use a ruler to insure accuracy. Press.

7. Now that you have  a crease, lift the border piece that is on top and smooth it out right side up. Align the crease so that it forms a 90 degree angle when placed on top of the adjacent border.

square mitered corner, check with a ruler

8. Now, mark where the corners join and carefully lift up that crease. Use Elmer’s water soluble School Glue or a water soluble glue stick that you are confident will wash out and apply some glue to the underside of the crease. I use Elmer’s School Glue because I know it will wash out.

Glue underside of crease wieh Elmer's School Glue

9. Press crease in place.

Press, making sure to keep a square corner

10. Okay, now that the miter is in place and can’t go anywhere, you’re just about set. Turn it to the back side and you will see the crease.

Crease from backside

11. Pull the quilt center away from the border. It will fold up at the same angle as the miter. You don’t want it in your way when you’re stitching. Notice that the crease starts at the place where the stitching meets in the corners of the quilt.

Fold away quilt center

12. Stitch from the place where the stitching meets in the corners of the quilt to the outside of the border right on the crease.

Stitch along crease

13. Trim away excess fabric.

Trim excess fabric

So there you have it! This is the easiest, most accurate method I’ve used for  mitering corners. And since the glue comes out when the quilt is washed, stiffness is not a problem. I love that I don’t have to mess with pins OR slippery fabric!

After about a year of working on designing a line of fabrics for Paintbrush Studio, the independent-only side of Fabri-Quilt, my line of fabric is now here in the states! It’s been pretty fun watching and working on its evolution. I’m very happy with the results and can’t wait to see what people do with it. It features 2 main fabrics, one with a caramel background and one with a light background:

Style # 1902

Style #1901

I love the watercolor look of the flowers and the mix of the caramel with the pinks greens and golds. If you know me well, you know that this color scheme is a bit of a stretch for me. Usually I can’t think in brown. But the whole mix of colors really works for me here.

There is a very useful stripe in the line, which I’m thinking will be used for borders. It cuts neatly into 8″ strips and has 5.4 repeats across the width of the fabric, so you will only need to purchase whatever length you need once, and have enough striping for all 4 sides of a quilt.

Border Stripe

Rumor has it that it will be shipping in July. It takes a while for the fabric to get onto the bolts and everything to get all ready. Check to see if the whole line is in at Paintbrush Studio. While we wait for it, know that I’ll be designing away with it. Because that’s my job!

This weekend there will be fun times in McMinnville, OR, at the McMinnville Comunity Quilt Show. It runs September 18 and 19 from 10-4 each day at the Bethel Baptist Church, 325 NW Baker Creek Road, McMinnville, OR.  They will have over 300 quilts on display, door prizes and more. On Saturday, I’ll be presenting a trunk show at 2pm. If you’re in the area, stop by, we’ll be looking for you!

A good time was had by all–at least it looked like it to me! So despite one ridiculously long flight to Texas that day, and only 3 1/2 hours sleep, I proved to myself that I really can do anything for just one day! God bless my hostess, Sarah, who was up until after 3:30 am to retrieve me from the San Antonio airport.

We had a trunk show in the morning and a 3 hour class in the afternoon where we made Quilt-O-Grams.  Here’s a photo of the ladies sorting through the shapes for their projects. It reminded me of shopping the sock sale the day after Thanksgiving!

Today I’ll make my way to Portland, OR, so I can fly to Texas tomorrow. The New Braunfels Quilt Guild near San Antonio has invited me to teach and speak there and I’m really looking forward to my trip. We’ll be creating some fun, fused cards that are featured in my book Quilt-O-Grams, © 2008 C&T Publishing. The last 3 days have been spent preparing a slide presentation to supplement the quilts I’m bringing, and juggling those quilts and supplies so that every piece of luggage is the right weight.

 There was fabric to be fused and shapes to be cut out for the projects. We’ll be making Fantasy Flower cards like these:

All these are made with simple shapes cut with the Accucut die cutting machine–easy and quick!

This one has some couched yarns on it just for fun.

This is my class sample project. I’m sure we’re going to have a great time. Wish you could be there!

Have you seen the newest design I made for Timeless Treasures?  They sent me the most scrumptious batiks to work with and this was the challenge: design a quilt that will look great in 2 totally different color ways, uses 12 fabrics each, all in the same amounts. Once I got my brain in the right frame of mind, the rest was a blast.

Here’s a tip: When you’re making the  long diagonal seams along the line that you’ve drawn on the block, be sure your seam allowance is a scant 1/4″. I just put the “fence” on my 1/4″ foot on the far side of the line and that worked very well. By doing this, you’ll be sure to have enough fabric to square up to exactly 12 1/2″. On the other hand, if the whole block is a bit smaller, the quilt police are not coming….
In this block, there are actually some goofy little seams that end up out in the middle of nowhere, that are part of the reason this block is so easy to make. It is also the reason I have you being a bit careful about matching the colors when you’re adding the frames around the squares. When the colors match, those goofy seams just don’t show. Using this goofy seam method keeps us from having to stitch a really long, unprotected bias edge and from having to match what would be diagonally cut frame pieces. Whew, I feel better already. Have fun with this!

revised figure 2a

For the last several months, I’ve been a guest blogger at www.quiltmag.com. It has been a good exercise for me in being consistent with this whole blogging thing. Here’s why it worked for me, plain and simple: There were deadlines. I work so well with them! at any rate, there are lots of things to catch up on here, and I hope to set my own deadlines so it will get written. See you around!

Okay, I don’t want to brag too much, but I just have to say that this year was my first perfect season–canning season, that is…. Almost every year my daughter and I can salsa and tomatoes–not because it’s economically sound, but because they taste so good! We go to the farm and get our ingredients and then spend two days with wrinkly hands in the kitchen. This year, for the first time I can ever remember, not one jar broke, and absolutely everything sealed. We canned 41 quarts of tomatoes, 12  half pints and 19 pints of salsa for our 2 households. Yum!

After finishing some fun projects for Timeless Treasures today, I dove into updating my website. This is something I promised myself I’d do before the end of summer, and I seem to have procrastinated long enough.

While enrolled in a course in HTML at the local community college this spring, I purchased Adobe Design Premium CS3 with my student discount, but I have absolutely no clue how to use the Dreamweaver program, and only a little experience with Photoshop. Suffice it to say that I didn’t let that hinder me, but jumped in and started changing things around. In a matter of an hour or so, I had managed to remove EVERY image from the site. After crying real tears, I phoned my son, boy genius, who fixed the problem in about 3 minutes. (Is every generation smarter than the one before??)

Now I am happy to say that I have actually added 3 quilts to the gallery where you can click to see a larger image. Check it out at http://www.cherylrosecreations.com/gallery  There are still a few kinks to work out, but I’m happy to be on my way.

When I was little, the only one who could call me me Rose or Rosie was my maternal grandpa. He was funny and I knew he loved me so it was okay. But I hated that middle name. Until I grew up and got Malkowski for a last name. Rose was looking pretty good about then, and my husband, Tom, calls me Rosie. So when I was looking for a business name, Malkowski got voted out pretty quickly and cheryl rose creations was born.

In 1993, I started both quilting and sewing cheerleading uniforms. My daughter had just made the freshman squad and I couldn’t bear the idea of spending $50 on a little tiny piece of –wait for it—polyester double-knit?? Weren’t we over that? Somehow I convinced the other mothers at that first meeting that I could sew those uniforms. Problem was, then I had to do it! That started 10 years of sewing uniforms for almost every cheer squad in my county. It translated into about 8 weeks of working 12 hour days every summer, with the small satisfaction of seeing the girls with uniforms that fit them nicely and earning enough money to fund my growing quilting addiction for the rest of the year.

In 2001, I did a personal inventory at a church retreat where participants were asked to put all kinds of events, activities, people and places on little sticky notes, and indicate whether we felt like it was a positive or negative influence in our lives. It was a real eye-opener to see my whole life laid out on a poster board, and I could see patterns forming. We were asked what we would do if money were not an issue and if we were guaranteed success. My choice was overwhelmingly to quilt. Realizing that quilting was what made me happy, I decided to follow that passion. Sewing those uniforms just had to go, I decided, and it didn’t make any difference if I never made any money the rest of my life. Not that I was getting rich off them, but although they were taking a large toll in stress and were grueling work, the income was guaranteed since the garments were pre-sold.

Within 6 months of making that decision, after giving myself time to pursue quilting as much as I wanted, I came up with the idea for chenille color sticks, which became the design basis for 3 patterns and led to my first book with C&T Publishing, Easy Chenille Appliqué, which came out in 2005. Since then, I’ve written 2 more books for them, Fun With One Block Quilts, 2007, and Quilt-O-Grams, due October, 2008, and have several ideas brewing for more. I also work with fabric companies, designing quilts for new fabric lines, and occasionally do a quilt for a magazine.

Did I mention I absolutely LOVE my job? This is the best, the perfect way for me to spend my time!

My husband, Tom and I live in Roseburg, OR, about 3 hours south of Portland on I-5. People say, “Oh, I’ve driven through there!” Exactly. Driven through. Unless you are a hunter or fisherman, hungry or out of gas, there’s no remarkable reason to stop. But we like it. It’s quiet where we live and we can see the river out the kitchen window.

Bosco is 40 lbs of unreasonably happy dog. A Keeshond, he has a pretty short attention span, and at 8 years old, still rodeos (bucks around like a crazed bull) even when all by himself in a room or outside. He is a happy distraction for me. People who think dogs should lay in the corner and sigh once in awhile find him annoying. He is sure that everyone who comes to the door is here to play with him, and only him. If he’s not getting the attention he thinks he deserves, he will go to the middle of the room, assume the begging position and bark if necessary.

I have 2 grown children, a daughter and a son, married to wonderful people. My son lives in the Silicon Valley of CA and my daughter is closer, up near Portland, OR. She is currently taking some time off to raise my first grandchild, a boy.

So there you go, that’s probably more than you were interested in knowing. Thanks for visiting my corner of the world!