Dear Cowgirl Crafty,

My quilt backing is only 43–44" wide, and my quilt will be approximately 34" across when finished. Will 5" of extra margin on each side be enough for the longarm machine? I have plenty of length, that dimension isn't a problem.

Also — if I add a 2" border all the way around, bringing the width to 38", I'd only have about two inches of margin on each side. I was thinking of cutting a couple of panels and stitching them onto the sides to bring that up to six inches each, then trimming them off after quilting. I'd have to stitch them in vertically. I'm trying not to buy wideback fabric unless I truly need it, and I have a lot of this 43–44" Riley Blake yardage for length, just not width.

— Kathryn

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Dear Kathryn,

Short answer: your original 34" quilt works as-is. For the bordered version at 38", you've got three solid options, pick whichever fits your needs, and I'll walk through why each works below.

Your 34" quilt: no changes needed

5" of margin per side is the standard minimum, and that's exactly what you've got: 44" minus 34" is 10" total, 5" per side.

Why margin matters: it gives the fabric a wide, even bed of tension while quilting. Skip it, and the vertical borders risk stretching, especially if the quilter needs to ease in any fullness. How much risk depends on the fabric, in my experience muslin, Minky, Kona, Moda, Pepper Cotton, and AGF all behave differently under tension, so there's no single number that predicts exact stretch. What's consistent: it's not worth risking over a few inches of fabric.

Your bordered quilt (38"): three options for backing

Option 1: Sew two lengths of yardage together. Stitch two 43–44" lengths along the selvage, about 1" from the edge. Trimming that seam's selvage afterward is optional. Leave a ½" minimum seam allowance and press it to one side so the seam lies flat and won't pop open if the quilt gets heavy use.

Option 2: Wideback. No piecing, no seam to manage, a good choice once a quilt outgrows what a single standard-width piece can cover with adequate margin.

Backing prep for options 1 & 2 (no squaring needed): provide at least 10" of extra width beyond the quilt top, a little more if your cut tends to run wonky. Separately, if you rip the fabric to straighten it, tearing rather than cutting, that process can fray the edge by about 1" on each side, so add 2" more: 12" wider than your quilt top instead of 10". Also provide 11" of extra height, 4" on the bottom, 7" on top. The extra height lets the longarmer square the backing as it rolls onto the take-up bar, before clamping the top edge in place.

Load direction: selvages run horizontally, East to West, parallel to the frame.

Option 3: Small quilts running selvages perpendicular to the frame. At 38" wide, your margins are only 3" per side, so this option gets you there without piecing. Cut a single, unpieced 44"-wide length, sized at your quilt top's height plus 11", or more if squaring that fabric is a challenge. This loads with the selvages running vertically, North to South, along the East and West sides, instead of the usual horizontal orientation. It's viable because your quilt is small, here's what to know:

• Load direction: selvages run vertically, North to South, perpendicular to the frame. Selvage is a tight, non-stretch edge, so it acts as a built-in tension bar on the sides, doing the job extra margin would otherwise do.
• Tension testing: longarmers test tension in the margins, using fabric similar to, or the same as, your quilt top, laid over the exposed batting and backing. Send a separate test strip, about 15" x 43/44" of backing and 5" x 10–15" of quilt top fabric, in case your longarmer needs a sample to test, fabric qualities vary as much as we covered above.
• Squaring: square the bottom edge to a true 90 degrees relative to the selvages, and add 11" of height beyond your quilt top. Square the top too, and that drops the backing height requirement to 8" more than your quilt top.
• One catch: this only works with non-directional prints. Rotating the fabric this way also rotates any printed pattern, so a directional print will run sideways. If your backing has a directional print, use option 1 or 2 instead.

Whichever option you choose, never trim off the selvages around the backing's perimeter. Having selvages that run perfectly parallel to the bar ensures your backing is almost perfectly even from side to side. Worried about sending more fabric than needed? Just ask your longarmer to return the leftover backing. And if your backing needs a specific loading direction, say so upfront.

Last resort: side-strips

Stitching narrow strips onto the sides creates vertical seams right alongside the border you're trying to protect. Vertical seams can invite tension inconsistencies and puckering if not monitored closely while quilting, depending on the fabric. To compensate, a longarmer sometimes has to gently put pressure on the quilt mid-stitch to keep the backing from puckering underneath, which can throw off pattern alignment. This is especially tricky for free-motion quilting, since we only have two hands.

If you do add strips at the edges to extend width, leave at least 3" of clearance for baby or lap quilts, four to five inches for larger ones. It also helps to load the quilt top onto the bar rather than floating it, to prevent the quilt from shifting causing it to quilt over the backing seams.

Bottom line

Your 38" quilt top works with any of the three options above. If you go with option 3, confirm with your longarmer ahead of time that she's on board. Always leave ample height for loading on the frame, and send a strip of fabric matching your quilt top so she can test tension accurately before she starts.

Quilt on.

— Cowgirl Crafty

People sometimes assume "California girl" means beaches, freeways, and a fairly ordinary suburban childhood. Mine wasn't that. During the years I lived with my mom, I grew up in small town West Marin, and looking back, the closest word for it is feral, in the best possible way.

The walk to the bus

Most mornings started the same way: a mile-long walk through thick morning mist, down the road, past the cows, to meet a friend at the end of the dirt road and catch the school bus. The cows sometimes fell in beside me, a tight little herd keeping pace right along the fence line for nearly a quarter mile, like an unspoken morning ritual we'd all agreed to without ever discussing it. One thing they did almost every time, without fail: trot up to catch me, walk along for a while, then suddenly spook for no reason at all, bolt fifty feet ahead, and all stop dead in unison for a perfectly synchronized group pee. Every single morning. I never did figure out what set them off.

One afternoon on my walk home, the cows were clustered nearby as usual, up the road ahead in their pasture, but they weren't making their friendly jolly jaunt over to say hello. Hmm, they must just be feeling lazy today, I thought. Then, on the small hill along the road, I saw why: two mountain lions, each bigger than a grown man, lying in the grass facing each other like dogs settled into a down-stay. The cows were caught in an awkward, unspoken triangle with the lions and me. They seemed conflicted, wanting to approach but reluctant to cross the path of a predator, and stiffened into a vigilant stance instead. They kept one eye on the cats and one eye on me as I made my way towards them. The two lions watched too, as if I were the out-of-place creature to observe, as I trekked the open road with nowhere to hide from their gaze. It was a little unnerving, being stared at by that many pairs of four-legged eyes. Every step felt like it stretched into a full minute, and no matter how far I walked I couldn't seem to put any real distance between us. And yet I was in total awe, thrilled even, to be that close to them, wanting to savor every second of it for as long as I could, all while calmly getting as far away from them as possible. Those two strings of barbed wire fencing will protect me, right?

No electricity, no plumbing, no problem

We lived more like homesteaders than anything else. No electricity, no indoor plumbing. My childhood happened almost entirely outside, running wild in the wind like a feral cat who'd simply decided the outdoors was home. We had chickens and a rabbit. My mom's then-boyfriend's kids, who I'd come to think of as my own brother and sister, and I swam in the pond among the pollywogs and cattails. I was seven, the girl was eight, the boy maybe five.

When I was eight, my mom and I moved to a different part of the land, and that's when I truly discovered the wonder of the sky. There was no light pollution, no sound of cars. I'd lie in bed and smile listening to the coyotes chatter and play somewhere out in the dark. Other nights, out under the Milky Way so clear it felt endless, I'd stare up at it half-convinced if I looked long enough something would finally beam me up for a little galaxy-exploring vacay. I was an enthusiastic, willing participant in that fantasy. To this day, I credit a solid decade of Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns with teaching me most of what I know about office politics.

That sky also gave me VIP seats to its own light shows. The vantage overlooked three bodies of water, the lagoon, the SF Bay, and the Farallon Islands decorating the Pacific beyond them. I saw more shooting stars than I can count, including one that was very large, looking like something big enough to actually be hitting the atmosphere, then decorating the sky with a sparkling firework display as it traveled from the meridian down to the horizon. And then there was the one that looked exactly like a shooting star, same size, same white point of light, just moving faster than any shooting star should, up above Mount Tam. Too fast for a plane, too high for anything else. It traveled the normal distance, then cut a sharp angle and kept going, no speed lost at all. I kid you not, I was a young adult by then, not a kid with an overactive imagination, and I genuinely don't know what that was. I wasn't on anything, I promise. Don't ask, because my mind absolutely could go there.

Cliff surfing under a full moon

One of my favorite things to do was cliff surfing on a full moon, when the moonlight was so bright it turned the whole coastline almost iridescent, like a second, quieter kind of daylight. There's a particular kind of excitement in that light, the urge to be out in it, exploring the seaside with nothing but the ocean's roaring, pounding rhythm as the soundtrack to the whoops and laughter with that rare friend who was brave enough to tag along.

Finding the road home in the dark

I studied traditional Balinese dance in town, and at around ten years old, I'd find myself walking home afterward under a hidden new moon, nothing but stars above a stretch of pitch blackness all around me to guide the way. I made a game out of it. One foot in front of the other, focusing in on what I could hear and which direction the curving road would take me up the cliffside, back to the house we were housesitting at that season. I think that's where I really learned how to find the fun in a situation that could easily have just been scary. Make lemonade, basically, even out there in the dark, alone, at ten.

Sundance

I had a pony named Sundance, an overstuffed, out-to-pasture kind of pony who, looking back, probably wasn't the safest mount for a kid. I didn't care. Every day after school I'd walk up the hill to the stables, get him harnessed and saddled, take him for a ride, then come back and clean the frogs of his hooves, brush him down, feed him, water him. I loved every minute.

He was wild, and he knew it. He'd run under low branches or press up against fences trying to scrape me off. He was strong, and I learned to hold my ground, to find a kind of mutual understanding that wasn't quite obedience and wasn't quite defiance either, just two stubborn creatures figuring out how to get along. We were mostly just friends, in the end. That's where I really learned to respect animals, and the wildness in them, instead of trying to tame it out of existence.

Drawing before I could really call it that

I drew constantly, every day, in nature, on anything I could find, long before I had any idea it would become a career. Even years later in high school algebra class, I was drawing on my desk instead of solving for x. Art runs deep on both sides of my family. My grandmother was the first woman to draw for Disney, working on Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. My father was an artist at heart, never a working one, he chose the corporate route instead, but he could seemingly do everything: art, building a car from nothing but a bare chassis, playing any instrument he picked up. My mother's hobby was art too, and she made sure mine never stopped growing, she kept my hands full of colored pencils and paper from the time I was small, and I took to it with something close to obsession. I drew every day until I discovered painting, first acrylic, then oil.

Starting at fourteen, I rode an hour and a half up and over the mountain every summer to attend college-level summer programs in Fine Art at the San Francisco Art Institute, alongside adults twice my age. I also spent a summer at College of Marin studying drawing, composition, and poetry. My mother, a non-drug-using hippie who brought me to everything, took me to Fort Mason for nude drawing workshops, Bohemian May Day festivals, Renaissance fairs, street music, master art classes and master theatre classes scattered all over the Bay, and any number of multicultural experiences, Japanese Monkey chants, African dance classes from several different countries, and drum circles. The world really was my classroom, and the Bay Area was rich with culture.

By fifteen, during the school year, I had a whole other life after dark. On cooler, clear, moody evenings, my friends and I would head to the local Beatnik coffee shop most nights around eight, a three-piece jazz combo playing low in the corner, me in a maroon wool beret and bright red lipstick, sitting for hours with black coffee sweet enough to stand a spoon up in, reading Charles Bukowski's Play the Piano Drunk/Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit, smoking clove cigarettes, writing abstract poetry, and doodling whatever stranger happened to be sitting two tables over. The faces with character in their lines were always my favorite to draw. That was me at fifteen, apparently.

My father, who leaned more yuppie-meets-Charlie Chaplin, pushed me toward commercial art, and got me my first job as a graphic designer through an apprenticeship where I learned to design logos and build art entirely by hand. In parallel, I taught myself how to apply everything I'd learned to typography and graphic design on the Mac. That foundation, fine art training as a kid, commercial design discipline as a young adult, became the base everything since has been built on, decades of professional work, including every pattern I draw today.

What it actually taught me

I think a childhood like that teaches you something most design schools can't: how to actually look at the world instead of just glancing at it. The texture of fog. The particular way moonlight changes a landscape. The way the sun casts long light across the city skyline from the other side of the Bay. The way a stranger's expression at a coffee shop can quietly tell you the story of the long day they've had, if you actually stop to look. The patience it takes to earn an animal's trust instead of forcing it. None of that was abstract for me, it was just Tuesday. That same childhood also made me independent, resilient, and tough, and somehow friendly and kind right alongside it, because the world really was my playground, and the community was my extended family. I had friends of every age.

And there was always a beloved black cat somewhere underfoot. He was my buddy, and our bond seemed to fill a void for us both. We were feral litter-mates, in our own way.

That's the soil Cowgirl Crafty actually grew out of. Not a brand exercise, not a mood board, a genuine, lived-in relationship with nature and people, layered underneath real training in fine art and commercial design. They say artists who have lived make better art. I believe that, and I hope it shows up in the work, quietly, the way the best parts of a childhood usually do.

When my daughter and I landed on the name Cowgirl Crafty, we were giddy. It felt right immediately, the kind of thing that arrives almost like magic in the middle of a brainstorm. But the more I've sat with it since, the more I realize the word doing the most work in that name isn't "Crafty." It's "Cow."

Where it actually comes from

I grew up in West Marin, right on the ocean, and we lived near a ranch. Most mornings I'd walk a mile through thick morning mist, down the hill past the cows, to meet a friend at the end of the dirt road and catch the school bus. Sometimes the cows would follow along in a tight little herd, right at the fence line, for nearly a quarter mile. There was nothing dramatic about it, just a kid and some cows, sharing the same patch of coastline before the bus came. But it planted something. Long before "cow" meant anything to a future business name, it meant calm, steady, unbothered presence. Cows aren't trying to be anything other than what they are.

If you didn't know, California, Oregon, and Washington are sometimes called the cow tri-states, dairy and cattle country running the whole length of the coast. I didn't grow up around cowboy culture exactly, but I did grow up surrounded by pasture-raised cows, an oversized pony named Sundance, and backyard chickens.

Funny enough, the cow theme followed me into the studio too. When I first got my Innova longarm, I set the row-finish sound to a deep, loud cow moo, just for fun. It didn't take long to realize the machine makes its own strange, alien moo-like sounds while it runs anyway. Apparently I can't escape cows, not even at the machine.

It started even earlier than that. Back in grade school, my best friend and I had a running bit where we'd randomly blurt out "purple cow" for no reason at all, and I'd sneak it onto the chalkboard the second the teacher's back was turned. Cow has clearly been trying to get my attention for a long time.

What it actually means in the name

Here's the part I think is worth saying out loud: quilters, as a community, are some of the most refreshingly unpretentious people I've ever spent time around. Capable hands, sharp minds, more interested in finishing a project than in how they look while doing it. There's a kind of confidence in that, a quiet, unbothered, "I don't need to perform for anyone" confidence, that I think is genuinely rare, and worth admiring.

That's what "Cow" is doing in Cowgirl Crafty. It's not decorative. It's a nod to that exact quality–natural, grounded, and capable, without any pressure to just be something to look at instead of something to reckon with. "Girl" is there because we get to celebrate that on our own terms. And "Crafty" is there because craft takes real skill, hand, mind, patience, and a kind of problem-solving that rarely gets the credit it deserves.

A name that means something

I didn't want a name that just sounded cute. I wanted one that actually said something true about the heart of the people I'm designing for, and about the kind of groundedness I've always found myself drawn to, in nature, in quilters, and honestly, in myself. Maybe that's why the name arrived the way it did, almost like magic, it was never really an accident. That's the magic behind Cowgirl Crafty.