Trim it and Finish it up!

OK, I know I said I was going to quilt mine before showing how to trim it. But I was asked oh so nicely to trim it first because some ladies wanted to add borders.

Then I felt bad because I originally was going to add borders to mine, but decided not to, then forgot that others may want to. Sorry!

So, here is how to trim the quilt top.

Lay your top out on a nice big surface

It actually helps to iron your top first. I was in a major hurry as I had three kids sitting on the recliner behind me ready to run!

I usually start in the bottom right corner when I trim, so that's where we're going to start. 

I sincerely apologize for the quality of some of these photos. I took some of them with my little point and shoot and I have no idea what happened. I need to check my settings, I recall seeing it in little hands one day.

Line your ruler up with the corner of the bottom block like pictured

I promise I did line mine up better than that, like I said, small children, in a hurry...

You want the ruler to run along the side of the quilt to where it lines up with the sides of the solid squares and the side of the print. It will cut right through your half blocks.

Trim along the length of the ruler

The square you created by adding triangles to your two middle rows become your top right corner

Line your ruler up again the same way you did before and trim

Follow all the way around until you have a square top

You may end up with some little flaps left over from trimming on the seams, just snip those off with your scissors. Or use your seam ripper if your inner perfectionist comes out to play.

That's it, you just made your quilt top! Now go ahead and add your borders if you'd like, and then quilt it and bind it.

You can find instructions for that here.

As always, we're in the Flickr discussion group if you need any help. Don't forget to post pictures!

I hope you enjoyed making this top, I definitely learned a few new things!