Sasing and Borders When all the blocks for a quilt are completed they must be joined and a border added to finsih off the edges. Some blocks are joined together and a border added to finish off the edges. Some blocks are joined edge to edge, creating secondary quilting patterns, while others need to be seperated by narrow strips of fabric called sasing to set them apart. Borders, usually a narrow inner one combined with a wider outer one, enclose the design and hold the quilt together visually. Quilting by hand has always been practiced for thousands of years in some form in almost every culture known to historians and anthropologists. What probably began as a way to hold layers of clothing together for warmth became a decorative art that has been handed down fromman different places. By the 16th and 17th centuries, European seamstresses were using quilting to embellish clothing and soft furnishings in a tradition that continues to this day. Machine Quilting and Binding: Quilting by machine was traditionally the ugly stepsister of the art, but since the advent of sewing machines designed to cope with the layers and especially the speed, have brouth the skill into its own in recent years. Well-worked machine quilting is attractive and versatile, aided by the range of machine embroidery threads. Always test a sample piece first and adjust the tension accordingly. Binding the edges is the final stages of making a quilt. Strip piecing provides a way of using up leftover scraps of fabric and of making an item of a particular size or shape. he method has probably been used since the beginning of stitching to join pieces of cloth and leather. Traditional strip piecing features in a number of quilting traditions, from the frugal Amish to the impoverished African American, and was widely used by the 18th and 19th centure quilters on the American frontier where new fabric was notoriously hard to obtain. Joining long pieces of fabric with straight seams by hand is, of course a tedious process, but with the adven to of the sewing machine in the mid-19th centure, strip-piecing became a time-saving way to assemble a quilt more quicly and accurately. However the modern method of strip piecing has evolved in the past 20 or 30 years, with the invention of the rotary cutter and its attendant accessories, the rotary ruler and self-healing, cutting mat. The pieces for a quilt top can now be cut in a matter of minutes instead of hours or even days, and the strips can be joined accurately by machine into complex patterns involving simple straight-sided shapes or precise angles. Today, quilters and designers are continually coming up with new ways to use the labor-saving devices on hand to create easy to assemble variations on designs as well as some new patterns or their own. Quilting Terminology Quilting Terms C to G Quilting Glossary H to P Quilting Terms Q to Z Tools Types Machine Quilts Fabric Guide Caring More Quilting Tips Quilting Machine Benefits Quilt Sandwich Quilt Pattern Tips Large Quilt