What Is Flange?

A flange is 3 dimensional piping

and it is a technique which is used in Hearts Desire.

It’s not hard to do and the effect is striking – especially when you choose a contrasting fabric. If you haven’t made it before, see how effective it is for yourself.

When washed, the flange may wave or ripple slightly, so this is something to consider when assessing how you want your quilt to look overall. I wanted to show you what washed flange actually looks like on a finished quilt. When I mention waves and ripples – I don’t mean highly visible waves or ripples, but you may have bubbling or creases afterwards. Like this:

The flange is in gold and ripples towards the right hand side corner.

and you can see more rippling on the right hand side of this photo too. It's not noticeable unless you are looking for it - however as quilters, our eyes often are looking for things exactly like this, so you can always replace a flange with piping or flat 1/4 inch seam instead, if you wish. It's something to consider.

Back to Hearts Desire:

I do love how the blue flange stands out in this quilt,

and that's the beauty of flange - simple and effective.

 

To Create The Flange (from our patterns)

Join together all bias strips in a continuous length with diagonal seams. Press folded wrong sides together. This is our 3 dimensional piping which is called flange.


Attach the flange onto the outer edge of the quilt centre. Use Elmer’s glue or pin into place—take care not to stretch the edges– have a tape measure ready to check the size. My centre of the assembled blocks measures 54 inches plus seams. Please measure yours.

For those of you who have never made flange and would like a step by step How To Tutorial, visit Julia - she has kindly posted a flange tutorial and invites you to make use of it on her blog. Her button below will link you to her site. If her tutorial helps you, please remember to thank her.