Borders

Here is the guest room bed with its soon-to-be-ready-for-quilting quilt.  After making the border for one side, I couldn't resist going upstairs to spread it out over the bed to see how it looks.  This pattern is Stars-on-Point by Cozy Quarters, and I just love the scrappy look of it.  Originally it was supposed to be a wall hanging or maybe a lap quilt, but the steroids attacked again (see yesterday's blog). 

While I was nearing the finish of the top itself, I chose the green homespun for the setting triangles and the border stripe fabric from the Chestnut and Vine line (don't you just love stripes?).  However, I didn't really like the green homespun next to the stripes because that combination emphasized green more than I wanted.  So I went back and found two Jo Morton's from Andover fabrics that I had used in the star blocks; one of those two was navy with beige and the other was beige with navy. 

Using the beige with navy in a one inch strip between the green setting triangles and the border stripe helped, but it still wasn't quite the look I wanted.  Then I tried adding the navy with beige (it looks almost black in this photo), and that brought in the blue again.  

While it looked good, I thought about the way I usually make my borders.  From the quilt outward I usually add a narrow strip, then maybe a medium strip, and finally the widest strip.  Do you do that, too?  No one ever taught me to do it that way.  After all, it's the way we frame our painting/art work, and it's the way most quilts are finished.  I wondered why, and what would happen if I didn't stop there.

As you can see, I repeated the beige and navy borders only reversed.  For several days, I left the fabrics layered this new way on the guest room bed where I would see it every time I walked past.  After three or more days, I still loved the look and decided to go for it.  

It seems a bit more formal in appearance than may be truly appropriate for this kind of scrappy quilt, but I like it for just that reason.  Scrappy quilts are sometimes viewed as artistically of lesser importance than quilts of traditional blocks or cohesive designs.  It may be because so many rely on a truly random approach to give them a comfortable, less formal look.  They are the quilts one feels free to wrap oneself up in. 

This quilt of mine is a combination of scrappy and traditional.  Try as I may, I can't quite allow myself to be random.  Planned randomness is the best I can do.  Secondly, this quilt, like most of mine, is a combination of fabrics.  There are reproductions, traditional, and homespun in this one.  I like the zip such a combination that gives a quilt.  So adding a formal border suits my philosophy and my eye.

None of this may work for you, but it certainly is fun to think about, isn't it?