Hip to Be Square; How to make your quilts lie flat and hang straight
1. Respect the Bias
There are three different ways to cut fabric: with the grain (length of fabric), cross grain (width of fabric) and bias (at a diagonal. They all can stretch but bias really stretches. Period. It’s not being difficult, it’s just doing what bias does. Which is great for garments. For quilts, not so much,
The trouble starts when we don’t plan for that stretch.
Anything cut on the diagonal needs to be handled gently. Don’t pull, don’t tug, and don’t iron; press. (Ironing goes back and forth; pressing goes up and down.) A little awareness here goes a long way.
2. Close Enough… doesn’t work with piecing
This is where things start to add up. If you have 3 seams on a large block quilt and you are off 1/2″ in 36″ no big deal. If you are doing a Dear Jane Quilt and you are off 1/64″ (less than a hair) you can be off by 7 or 8 inches in a 70″ quilt. One seam that’s a hair off? No big deal.
Fifty seams that are a hair off? Now we’ve got a situation.
You don’t need perfection. You need consistency. Accurate cutting and a consistent seam allowance will save you from a whole lot of “why won’t this lay flat?” later on. This is why it’s so important to measure your quilt before applying borders. It allows you to adjust for any seam allowance discrepancy between the AutoCAD program that designed the quilt and your actual sewing machine.
3. Borders Are Sneaky
Borders look simple, but they can be a source of serious headaches.
As previously mentioned, your actual quilt size and the pattern size might vary. I highly recommend throwing out the directions when you get to the instructions for border lengths. Instead measure the quilt at the top, middle, and bottom, take an average of the 3 and use this measurement to cut your borders. Ease in any extra fullness by placing the fuller piece (might the border, might be the quilt top) on the bottom next to the feed dogs. I always glue my borders using Elmer’s school glue before sewing. Anything that makes a sewn section act as a single unit will give you better results. Repeat for each border you add.
I thought I was avoiding this problem when I first started by not cutting my borders at all. Instead, I cut a piece the correct width by however long my fabric was. I’d place the quilt on the bottom next to the feed dogs of my machine and the border material on top, conveniently thrown over my shoulder, to keep it out of the way. Between the feed dogs moving the quilt slightly faster and the light tension on the border strip, I wasn’t making a border. I was making a dust ruffle.
Yes, this method takes a little more effort, but it’s worth it.
(Want more tips and tricks for adding borders? Check out my book Stress Free Quilting Borders, Bindings, and More.)
4. Medallion Quilts (Treat as multiple borders)
When you’re building out from the center, it’s really tempting to just make things fit as you go. Stretch until it fits does not work for quilts.
Each round needs to be measured and added with intention. If something is off, fix it then. Don’t wait and hope quilting will take care of it. It’s possible, but it’s a lot more work.
Use the method listed in the border section above to measure each section before adding the next medallion section. Tip: if you are doing a pieced section and it just doesn’t want to play nice with the previous section, don’t rip and resew. Instead, add a solid or contrasting non pieced border in between the two to make them the correct size to join accurately.
5. How You Load Your Backing Matters
It’s fairly easy to square up a small backing, but a California King is a whole different ballgame. Parallel edges matter way more than perfectly square corners.
Leave the selvages on and pin those to your leaders. They won’t stretch and are a guaranteed parallel edge. Try to avoid pieced backs, if possible. Start in the center and pin out to both edges.
6. Only The Center of One Side of the Backing Matters
This one alone fixes a lot of headaches.
Find the center of the bottom selvage of your backing. Bin this to your bottom leader. Carefully roll the backing around the take up bar until the top of the backing is even with the top leader. It will be nice and parallel, but not necessarily square. We don’t care. Pin where it lays not where the center is. (See Fig 1) If I pull it so that the center matches the center of the leader it will instantly add fullness and potential pleats and tucks to the backing. (See fig 2)
I don’t care how many times you roll the backing back and forth on the leaders. It will not fix this!
7. Pieced Backs Are Pretty… and Sometimes Problematic
Piecing backs is often seen as a way to use up fabric, but should be done with the same care and precision that you piece your top. It’s much harder to work in excess fullness on the back where you can’t see it. I would prefer to have two tops and use wide backs for the backing instead of a pieced top and back.
If you, or your customer, is determined to use a pieced back, try to load seams horizontally so they roll better. If possible, try not to stack a bunch of bulky intersections in one spot.
The smoother the backing, the easier everything else is going to be.
8. Stop Petting Your Quilt
This is the big one. We love our fabric and we constantly want to smooth it out and make it look flat and pretty before quilting. When something looks off, the instinct is to smooth it, tug it, adjust it… and keep doing that until it looks “better.”
Except now the problem has just moved somewhere else. The more you pet your quilt, the more you chase the problem around. Just like in life you have to deal with the problem where you find it. If you keep pushing it off, it will only get bigger and harder to deal with. There is no such thing as quilting it “out”. You can however quilt something “in”.
Line up a seam or sashing strip with your belly bar and try to equally distribute any fullness in the quilting area over your work space. Quilt around particularly full areas to stabilize them and then work on quilting in the extra fullness. I use dense quilting, spray starch (test for color fastness) and even an occasional judicious pleat hidden in a seam line.
9. Wavy Borders
Wavy borders are one of the most common issues quilters for hire encounter. They are caused by putting a border on a quilt that is longer than the quilt it is being attached to. I talked in number 3 about how to avoid making them, but now I’m going to talk about how to fix them when you’re quilting.
The instinct is often to stretch, tug, or smooth them out, but that will make things worse. Instead try to avoid over-handling especially if the quilt has a lot of bias edges around the outside. Consider stay stitching the edges before loading the quilt.
Next, Baste from the belly bar up. This helps keep the fullness in manageable areas rather than pushing it all to the bottom where it is almost impossible to deal with. Then, use denser quilting like a micro stipple or piano keys (straight line quilting) to suck in the extra fullness.
You can also apply light pressure while quilting to help pull some of the extra fullness away from the needle to avoid pleats. This approach helps manage the wave without distorting the rest of the quilt.
10. “Smiley Quilt” Effect
This is the opposite of a wavy border. It comes from putting a border on a quilt that is smaller than the side it is being attached to.
Use your belly bar as a visual reference to line up seam parallel with the bar. In this situation only, you might have to gently pull the sides of the border out a little. Try to do this as judiciously as possible. It is better to work extra fullness in in the center of the quilt than to try and stretch it out.
The consistent theme here? Control, not force.
A Different Way to Think About Quilting
When you step back and look at the whole process, quilting becomes less about perfection and more about understanding. Understanding how fabric behaves. Understanding how small decisions add up. Understanding how to respond instead of react. And that’s where things start to feel… easier. Less frustrating.
More predictable. More enjoyable.
When Things Start to Click
There’s a moment in every quilter’s journey when things begin to make sense. You load a quilt and it behaves. You quilt through a tricky section without panic.
You finish and think, “That actually went really well.”
Those moments don’t come from memorizing rules. They come from seeing the whole picture.
Taking It Further (Without the Overwhelm)
If any of this sounds familiar, if you’ve struggled with fullness, wavy borders, or quilts that just don’t cooperate you’re not alone. These are some of the most common challenges quilters face, and they’re rarely solved by working harder. They’re solved by working differently. By understanding what’s happening before the quilt ever reaches the machine.
By learning how to read the quilt as you work. By having a clear, practical approach to handling issues as they arise.
That’s exactly what I focus on when I teach. Not just the “how,” but the “why.” Because once you understand the why, the how becomes a whole lot easier.
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