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I’ve had SO MANY people ask how they can use QAYG with sashing. So many!
I don’t usually use sashing (or borders) in my quilts – but for this dinosaur quilt I really wanted them to divide the long panorama-style rows of dinosaur landscapes.
So it’s the perfect opportunity for a video!
I need to clarify one thing up front. This is NOT the sashing you often see in QAYG quilts. In most QAYG with sashing, that sashing is designed to hide the seams between the blocks, and it’s usually pretty skinny (usually maxing out at about an inch wide).
This is more traditional-style sashing (or borders) that you can make any width you like.
It’s done just like adding sashing to a regular quilt – except that you quilt the fabric to the batting before you cut it in strips and sew it to the blocks.
It really is that simple.
Here’s the video showing how. . .
See how easy that is?
You use the exact same method if you want to add borders to your QAYG quilt.
I promised links to a few more helpful videos and tutorials related to this one, and here they are.
General intro to my Quilt As You Go method
You can also get a great overview of my QAYG method in this free video workshop.
How to Add Sashing to a Quilt – this is for any quilt, not just those using QAYG
Quilting from the Center Out to the Edges (used on the large piece of sashing fabric you saw in this video)
And that awesome dinosaur skeleton fabric I used for the sashing? Sorry. It’s been discontinued now. 🙁 But the good news is that there’s ALWAYS a great selection of dinosaur fabrics in the world. 🙂
Happy quilting!

So when doing Quilt as you go you don’t use a backing fabric?
You do still use a backing – you just don’t add it until the very end, after you quilt all your blocks and sew them together. There’s a video here on using cuddle fleece on the back that shows the back pretty well. https://www.shinyhappyworld.com/2016/04/tips-for-quilting-a-cuddle-fleece-back-video-tutorial.html
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Thank you for this tutorial. Just to clarify…with adding a border, you would do the quilting the same way as with this sashing, however, you’d have the borders going different directions. Does that make a difference how you would do the quilting? Would you do vertical quilting for the side borders, horizontal for the top/bottom borders?
It depends on the look you want. Some people want the quilting in the borders to all run in the same direction, some people want it to circle around the center like a frame – there’s no one way to do it. Also – if you’re using a directional print that may change the way you want the fabric to run.