I have a friend who made quilts as a gift for twin girls when they were born. The girls grew, but the quilts stayed the same size. The mother of the twins asked my friend if she could enlarge the quilts to fit on top of their beds. My friend agreed, but life happens, and the quilts were put on a shelf in her sewing room.
I heard about these quilts a few times, and we discussed how they could be made bigger. I thought the quilt-as-you-go method might be a good technique. My friend thought about it, and I didn’t hear anything. A while later, the quilts came up in conversation again. I offered to do the enlarging since my friend wasn’t really doing any sewing, let alone any quilting.
So now I have a new project. QAYG didn’t really appeal to me. I knew there must be a way to add borders and make it look like all one quilt. I scoured the Internet and found a video that explained that it was possible but didn’t give all the details without buying a tutorial. I was willing to do that. Who knows, more people might want bigger quilts, and it wasn’t a huge investment. I did a little more digging and found another video with enough instruction that I could figure it out by myself.
Even though the girls are twins, I’m sure they have some different personality traits and may not always want to be exactly alike. I asked the mother if she still wanted the quilts the same. The quilts had different colored binding, so they were not quite exact. She said, “Not the same.”
I drew a picture of the quilt and played around with individual borders. I wanted to use the same fabrics but arrange them differently.
I cut 4” x 7” rectangles and arranged them along the sides of one quilt like “piano keys.” Each side matched the corresponding side. I lined the rectangles up for the second quilt in two rows, one gray and one pink.
The quilt also had little patchwork flowers appliqued on some of the squares. Since the borders were not as big as the quilt squares, I reduced the flower pattern for the quilt's corners.
I spent the last few days sewing the rectangles together; I will applique the flowers in the morning.
And now that the easy stuff is done, I will do my best to accurately cut off the binding and sew the newly made borders to the quilts.
Stay tuned!