For those that know me... attaching borders properly is one of my biggest quilting peeves. It is much too easy to fix just about anything that is askew or un-square in your quilt if you attach the borders properly and it only takes a few minutes extra. Any pattern that tells you to cut you borders "x" inches and attach is wrong. Any pattern that tells you to sew your fabric on and then square-up the ends is wrong. The proper way to cut and attach a border is to take three measurements -- one down the center and one of each side. You then take the average of these three numbers and cut your side borders that measurement. You pin it at the center, and also at each end, then you ease the fabric between the pins -- sometimes you have to ease the quilt, sometimes you ease the borders. You then repeat this process with the top and bottoms borders, measuring each, and also across the center and then use the average of those three measurements for cutting your top and bottom borders. See, a few extra minutes will totally correct any issues in your quilt top and result in beautifully smooth non-pucked un-wavy borders.
So, I was working on a quilt... and guess what... yep, wavy, ripply, OMG borders. Here are some before and after pictures while I was working on the quilt:
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And, after all that pulling, pinning, tucking, smoothing, and meandering, here is the finished quilt:
In the end the quilt turned out beautiful.