Border Matters 01

At Christmas I swap the everyday cushion covers in our living room for seasonal ones. When our group taught a block or technique I would often make a Christmas version and make it into a cushion cover. Now I have Christmas covers without a suitable size cushion and larger cushions without a matching  Christmas cover. I do have some orphan 12" blocks from a wonderful applique class taught by Inger Milburn and I am killing two birds with one stone, adding borders to upsize them and illustrate different border strategies to the U3A class.
I was surprised by how good my 20+ years ago applique technique was, both machine and but especially by hand. I'm not sure I do it so nicely now. I think I mastered needleturn in Inger's class; perhaps I  need to relearn it. We learnt a different technique with a different block every class and I always tried my very best.
Anyway a basic technique for borders is to add a strip to two opposite sides and then longer strips to the remaining sides. I don't do this very often. The busy prints hide the joins.

I added 4" x 12.5" strips top and bottom of the block and 4" x 19.5" strips to the sides. Quilting will reduce the size which I shall trim to 18.5" to make an 18" finished size cushion.

Here is my basic sample with the longer strips at the top and bottom. I should have taken assembly pictures.