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Preparing a Quilt Panel
What is a Quilt Panel?
A quilt panel is a pre-printed section of fabric featuring a large, self-contained design. Unlike regular quilting fabric where a pattern repeats across the yardage, a panel is meant to be used as a focal point in a quilt. Panels are usually sold by the panel rather than by the yard and come in a wide range of themes — animals, landscapes, novelty prints, holiday designs, and more. Most are sized to be framed by borders or pieced blocks, making them a fun and easy way to build a quilt around a design you love.
Quilt panels come in a variety of sizes, from 24″ wide to 36″ wide. Most are vertical, but some are horizonal and some are designed to be cut apart. (Kris’s note: if you are looking for a pattern for a specific size panel, check the alphabetical page. I list panel sizes in the Notes column.)
Why Quilt Panels Need Preparation
A quilt panel may look ready to sew straight from the fabric store, but some panels are not printed perfectly square. The grain of the fabric can shift during printing, and the edges may not be exactly straight. Or the shop may not have cut it properly.
If you have prewashed it, the panel may have skewed in the washing and drying cycle. (Read The Dirty Truth about Clean Fabric.) If you cut and sew the panel without preparing it first, the quilt can end up twisted or difficult to border.
A few minutes of preparation helps ensure the panel sits flat and square inside your quilt layout. This is especially important if the panel will be surrounded by borders or pieced blocks that need accurate measurements. Most quilt patterns that use panels need those panels to be a specific shape and size.
Press for Success
Before doing anything, press the panel carefully. Use steam if needed and press from the back of the fabric. Avoid stretching the panel while pressing. Panels with large printed areas can distort easily if pulled or tugged.
A well-pressed panel will lie flat and make the next steps much easier. To find the center so you can trim it properly, fold your new panel in quarters and press both centers. That will help you center the panel as you trim it.
Start by Measuring the Printed Area
Before cutting anything, measure the part of the panel you will actually use, not the fabric around it. Panels often include extra background fabric or uneven margins.
Lay the panel flat and measure this section corner to corner diagonally. If both diagonal measurements match, the panel is square. If they are different, the panel is slightly skewed. Most panels are off by at least a little. Fabric is forgiving. If it’s only a little off, you can dampen the fabric and try to pull it straight.
If the panel is too large or too small for the pattern, you will have to cut it down if it is too large or add a coping strip if it is too small.
To Trim or To Cope?
Sometimes you can prepare a quilt panel by trimming it slightly to make the edges straight. Other times trimming would cut into the design. When that happens, the easiest fix is to add coping strips.
Coping strips are narrow strips of fabric sewn to the edges of the panel to create straight, even sides. They also give you a place to adjust measurements so the panel fits your quilt layout. For example, if you were using a panel that needed to be 24″ wide by 42″ long, you would need to add 1″ coping strips to the sides of a 23″ wide by 42″ long panel. When figuring the size of a coping strip, don’t forget about the 1/4″ seam allowance.
A coping strip can use a contrasting fabric to create an Accent Border. It can also be made of the same fabric as the background of the quilt or the panel to create a Floating Border. When a border is made of the same fabric as the background and is sewn so that it surrounds the center, it is called a floating border. It gives a little separation between the center and the next border, thus “floating” it away from that border.
Coping strips are especially useful here:
- the printed image is off-center
- the panel edges are uneven
- the panel size does not match your block layout
For example, to prepare the quilt panel in the Enchantment quilt, it needed a small coping strip to make the center of the quilt the same size as the square-in-a-square border. That was actually a Floating Border as the color matched the background of the panel.
After this border was added, another coping strip was added to bring the center of the quilt to the size needed for the border blocks to fit properly. It was colored to be an Accent Border.
Sewing Ahead
Before you begin attaching coping strips, take a moment to prepare them. If the panel is wider or longer than your fabric width, you’ll need to join strips to make them long enough.
To save time, sew the LONG strips needed for coping strips end to end ahead of time. Miter the joins if you like by sewing the two strips right sides together at an angle as shown to right. Cut off the excess 1/4″ from the seam. Press the seam open.
Finalizing the Panel
Matching the center of the coping strip with the center of the panel, sew a strip to each side of the panel. Use a walking foot if you have one. It helps feed the two fabrics through the feed dogs of your machine evenly. If not, use pins. “Ease to fit” if necessary.
Easing is the technique of coaxing two pieces of slightly different lengths to fit together. With right sides together, place the layers so the panel is closest to the feed dogs — they will help ease the extra length. If the coping strip is the longer piece, reverse the layers so the strip is closest to the feed dogs instead. Either way, use plenty of pins and sew slowly.
Repeat for the top and bottom if necessary.
Preparing a quilt panel may feel like an extra step, but it prevents many common quilting frustrations. A few careful measurements and a little trimming can make the difference between a quilt that fits together easily and one that constantly fights you at the sewing machine.
For more suggestions on using quilt panels, see the article on How to Make a Quilt using a Panel.
Examples of quilts made using panels
