You finish putting together all of your quilt blocks and are ready to start putting on borders. 

Every border you’ve done so far is a straight seam border with one side having longer borders than the other side. 

You want to try something else but aren’t quite ready to dive into pieced borders. 

Ever thought of trying to miter a quilt corner of your borders?

What is a mitered quilt corner?

A miter corner in quilting is the same as a mitered corner in woodworking. 

It’s a corner that is cut at a 45 degree angle to make a pretty diagonal angle from the inside corner to the outside corner. 

No longer do you have boring borders, but a pretty picture frame all around your meticulously pieced blocks. 

After you’ve gotten the basics down with a straight seam border, a mitered corner is a great next step. 

It uses whats called a “Y” seam to make the 45 deg angle. 

The Dreaded Y Seam

Y seams are really not that different from the straight seam you know and love. 

A Y seam is used when you want 3 pieces of fabric to be sewn together, but have an odd angled seam, instead of a straight seam up and down. 

These are commonly used in hexagon quilts where there are no right angles. Every seam is a Y seam.

It does take a little know-how to understand what you are doing with it, but once you understand how easy the technique is, you’ll be using them every where. 

And borders are a great place to practice using them before trying to commit to a whole hexagon quilt full of them.

Making three seams meet at the same place

The idea for this seam is that we want three individual lines of stitching to meet at the same place and not interfere with each other.

In order to do this successfully, we need to complete those seams without touching the fabrics associated with the other seams. 

But to avoid holes in the finished quilt top, all three seams need to end at the exact same spot.

Don’t let the fact that it has a name scare you. 

Learning how to miter a quilt corner isn’t nearly as hard as it sounds.

In this tutorial I’ll show you just how easy they are.

How to Miter a Quilt Corner

Step one: Cutting Border Lengths

This is going to be a bit different than how you’ve cut borders in the past. 

When we cut these borders we want both edges to comfortably extend past the adjacent future borders.

If they are only cut as long as the quilt top, they will end up too short. 

Step Two: Pin the border on

Time to take your border strips and pin them to the quilt. 

You’ll want to pin them intentionally in a few spots before worrying about the rest of the border.

When you go to sew the border on you will not be sewing from off the edge down the full length of the side like you usually do for straight borders.

We only want to sew the border from 1/4” in on both ends of the quilt. This will leave the border  unattached just at the very end.

so we want to use a pin to give us a clear marker of that 1/4″ for where to start and stop.

For this task I like to use my Purple Thang for a quick 1/4” measurement. 

Don’t have a Purple Thang? It’s great for quick checks of your 1/4″ allowance without pulling out a huge ruler. Check it out on Amazon here.

Pin right at the 1/4” in from the corner on both sides, and then as frequently as you like throughout the middle. 

Step 3: Sew the first border

When you start, you’ll want to drop your needle exactly at the spot where your first pin is measuring the 1/4”. 

Do not start at the edge of the quilt.

If we sew too much inside of that 1/4” from the edges, it will create a weird pucker to the miter corner where it’s tacked down unnecessarily. 

Start stitching from that first 1/4” mark and stitch all the way to the other 1/4” mark at the opposite end of the quilt.

Reinforce your stitches at both ends and leave your tails as is.

Press the border open.

Step 4: Add the next borders

You can do two borders across from each other at the same time, but wait to do the adjacent sides until you’ve finished the first set to make it easier. 

For the last two borders you are going to do exactly the same as the first two. 

The caveat is that those 1/4” marks where you start and stop should be the exact place where the first borders were marked.

So when you pin, take a minute to be sure that when you sink your needle down where the pin is, it will go right into the same first stitch as the adjacent border. 

When you have them added, leave the tails flailing about and press those borders open as well!

Step 5: The actual Y Seam

Here’s where we get a little fancy.

Once all borders are applied, fold quilt on the 45 so adjacent borders line up at raw edge on one corner.

Pull the free end of the two adjacent borders out so they line up perfectly with each other.

Using your previous stitching as a reference, use a quilting ruler and line the 45 deg angle reference of your ruler along the bottom raw edge of the borders. 

Line the edge of the ruler up so it hits that place where your 1/4″ mark is for the borders.

Draw that 45 deg line and pin it like a mad person so it doesn’t move before you get to the sewing machine. 

This time when you sew, you want to drop that needle exactly in that same 1/4″ mark place where you two borders met.

Reinforce your first two stitches or so, and then sew right along your drawn line all the way off the edge of the quilt. 

You want to be intentional when you do this to avoid catching the fabric of your blocks and only catch the two fabrics of your borders. 

Folding on the 45 like we did should help accomplish this pretty well though.

Just be careful when you reinforce your stitching not to back up beyond the point where you started.

When you have your line sewn, use your quilting ruler and rotary cutter to trim the excess from your seam allowance and press your seam open!

Tada!

Miter a Quilt Corner: The Troubleshooting

If you have any pieces of your corner pulling in a certain direction (this will be pretty obvious if you do) it is likely you went one stitch too many in one direction anchoring the fabric where it shouldn’t be. 

This is often as result of backing up too many stitches beyond your 1/4″ mark when you start and stop.

That extra stitch can just be ripped if you catch it early.

If that doesn’t seem to be the case, you may have caught threads of the third piece of fabric anchoring it down in the wrong spot while making a seam.

You can just leave it as a testament to the learning process or pull out the stitching and try again. 

Either way the stitching is sound so that is totally up to you. 

How did it go? Did you have any issues with it? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll be sure to help!