Green Borders Decision

Thank you so much for your responses to my border question.  There will be more of those coming up in future posts.  It’s fun and quite educational for me to read your comments.  When one reader terribly dislikes one border, another reader will think it’s perfect. You never have to worry about hurting my feelings . . I’ve read judges’ comments on my quilts after quilt shows and survived those! :)

Since I’m pretty much self-taught when it comes to piecing, designing, color, and even quilting, I learn a lot by reading your comments.  When I’m designing a border, I try to include a portion of a block that was used in the body of the quilt.  What may start out as a portion of the block my “morph” into something totally different.  Once I think I have an acceptable shape, whether it be squares, triangles, rectangles or a combination of that or any other geometric shape, I begin adding color.  All three of the borders below are the same exact combination of squares and rectangles, just different portions of them are colored differently.

It isn’t very scientific (but who cares about that anyway) but one of the easiest ways for me to get a good feel for the borders is to do like I did last night and put three of them up on a blog post.  Some blog posts you see and some you don’t see.  I can then go to my BlackBerry, where each quilt is about the size of a peanut and I can see all three quilts at once.  On a screen that size, I see which borders stand out, which borders blend too much, which ones I look at and see only the border and not the main quilt.  Without the BlackBerry, I can bring all three up side by side like this:

They may stay up on my computer screen all day, or I might print them and look at them off and on for several days.  The more I look at them, the more I can distinguish my likes and dislikes about each border.

On these three borders, I roughly tallied the votes fairly early this morning and more have voted since I counted but here’s how they came out:

Quilt #1 - 12 votes

Quilt #2 - 52 votes

Quilt #3 - 18 votes

My choice:  Quilt #3.  In the end, what matters is what you  like . . what pleases you.  You can see by the votes that there’s no right or wrong response.  Someone loved and someone disliked each of these border choices.  I think it’s more important to enjoy the process than to stress over making sure you have made the perfect choice.  There really is no perfect choice — it’s all in what you like!

Finish #14

The last of the donation quilts in this batch for the Houma Guild to give to the children’s home.

This is one of my favorite borders.  There’s a little guide to making this quilt and this border here.

Rarely . . I Quilt!

Does it seem to you like it’s been forever since I had a quilt related post?  Well, it seems that way to me too.

Remember when I had to hurry up and make a quilt because I couldn’t find the blocks I’d already made and had a deadline?  This week I received the quilt back from Kansas City Star.

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Simple framed pinwheels and one of the borders I shared in this post.   I even used leftover strips for the binding.  Maybe eventually I’ll come across the first set of blocks (and my ipod) and I’ll have two quilts! :)

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Making a Pieced Border Fit

By using a coping or fudge strip, we can make any pieced border fit our quilt tops.   In order to make a pieced border fit your own top, follow these easy steps.  Take each step, one at a time, in order.  Don’t worry about step 3 til you’ve finished steps 1 and 2.  Don’t make it hard — it’s so easy!

  1. Width of quilt (NOT counting seam allowance):   (A) _____________
  2. Size blocks you want to use in  your border: (B) ____________
  3. Number of blocks that fit closest to your width – divide (A) by (B) = (C)___________ (round up to whole number)
  4. Multiply (B) x (C) = (D)________________
  5. Subtract (D) – (A) = (E)_________________
  6. (E) divided by 2 = (F)______________
  7. (F) plus seam allowances is the size of the coping strip you need to add to the left and right sides of your quilt to make the desired top/bottom border fit.

You will do the same thing for the length of the quilt and this will be for your top and bottom borders.

Example:  The example I’m using is made up of 10″ (finished) blocks and is set 4 blocks across and 5 blocks up and down, with a 2″ sashing.

Border1

  1. My quilt as drawn, is 46″ x 58″.  A = 46″.
  2. I want to use a 5″ block in my border.  B = 5″.
  3. Divide (A) by (B).  46 divided by 5 = 9.2 so I need 10 blocks.  C = 10.
  4. B X C = D    5″ blocks x 10 blocks = 50″.  D = 50″.
  5. D – A = F.  50″ border width – 46″ quilt top width = 4″.  E = 4″.
  6. E divided by 2 = F.  4 divided by 2 = 2.  F = 2″.
  7. Add 1/2″ (1/4″ for the two sides) to the ” (F) measurement and this is the size of the coping strip, which in this case will be 2-1/2.  This is the size of the left and right border to be added to the above example in order to make a top and bottom pieced border made of 5″ blocks fit perfectly.  46″ (width of top as shown above) + 2″ (left border) + 2″ (right border) = 50″.  10 blocks x 5″ = 50″.  Perfect!

Do the same thing with your length measurement (in this example it’s 58″) to get the size of the coping strip you would add to make those 5″ blocks fit.

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