We had a wonderful lesson from
Amy at Guild last month. She taught us two ways to make cathedral windows. This is made using the "traditional" method. Don't look too closely! My seams are far from perfect.
I chose fabrics to coordinate with, but not match too closely, my
Flight quilt, since I wanted to use both in the living room.
I knew I wanted to put a border around the panel of windows, so they wouldn't wrap too far around the sides of the pillow. The way the panel is done, though, there is no seam allowance around the edge. And I didn't have enough of the grey crossweave left to make a single large panel to attach the smaller window panel to.
So, here's what I did. First of all, when making the panel, leave each of the folded-in triangles of fabric on the outside edge of your panel free and un-stitched. You can see in the photo below that some of mine are pinned down to keep them in place.
Cut a piece of muslin (or other unwanted scrap fabric -- this will not be seen) the exact size of your panel. Cut four strips of the fabric you want to use for the borders at least 1" wider than you want the borders to be, and as long as your center muslin panel plus double the width of your border. (I didn't take a photo of this, but I wanted 1.5" borders so I cut four strips of grey 2.5" in width and at least 3" longer than the width of my panel).
Sew the border strips to your muslin panel, using a 1/4" seam and stopping 1/4" from each corner.
Fold back one strip to line up with the other to mark your 45 degree angle. (This is a terrible photo, sorry). Press with an iron or hera marker.
Fold your panel on the diagonal, right-side in, so that it lines up with the line you have made in your fabric. This is your sewing line.
Sew along line, starting from the point where your two seams come together at the corner.
Turn and press. Now repeat for the other three corners.
Place your panel on top and center. The muslin should be well-hidden since it is now 1/4" smaller than the panel on all four sides.
Unpin your side "flaps" (I can't really think of a better name for these) and fold outward. Pin to the border fabric. I used lots of pins here to keep everything straight and discourage the flaps from moving around.
Do this all the way around the panel.
You are now going to sew all the way around your square in the folded line made when you unfolded your side triangles.
I used my walking foot for this to reduce shifting. Go slowly to avoid catching the flaps. If you look closely, you can see the seam here -- sorry for the bad pic.
Now fold your flaps back in, tack them down, and finish them. I decided to leave the four outermost corners unturned.
Done.
Now you can complete your pillow any way you wish. I did a simple envelope closure, though I had to piece the pack because I was so low on fabric.
That's it! I hope this was helpful. I am sure there is probably a better way to do this, but I thought this worked pretty well. Of course, if you have oodles of fabric you could just cut a large square panel the size you want and skip the adding-borders step, but I like the way the mitered seams look at the corners, and it definitely saved a bunch of fabric to use muslin for the backing.
