Wednesday, March 10, 2010

BORDERS

What size do you make your borders? How do you decide what size to make borders? Different designers have different theories about borders. Almost NO ONE is without an opinion about how wide to make a border. Sometimes there's math involved (oh dear) ... the ratio of the block size to the border width ... or something like that.


I have a couple of theories about borders ... very scientific. I know the blog world is waiting to be inspired. Here goes ...



OPTION #1



I had exactly one yard of the brown polka dot fabric left over from making the blocks and I wanted to use it in the border. I needed 7 cuts across the width so my border strips had to be cut 5" wide.








OPTION #2


This quilt was made by Dawn and we discussed how wide the border should be (opinions - remember). I was going to quilt it and I have lots of 60" batting. Easy decision ... the border was cut so the quilt measured 58".













That's the most complicated I ever get with math.




Here's a little teaser of what Dawn's quilt looks like. Maybe she'll post a picture of the whole quilt over at Spring Water Designs.

2 comments:

Dawn said...

Great tease ~ I Loooove it!!! I can't wait to see it in person now :)

Colleen said...

I enjoyed your border discussion soooo much, you sound just like me. I always wing it and just lay out my fabric according to how much I have left = border size. Or my other solution is to order more of a favorite just for the border. That is the easy way!
Now, on the other hand, my newest project --- I am working with pieced borders from the English Medallion Quilting book. They are more involved since they are pieced. I was lucky on my first border because it just happened to fit my center medallion that already had a 3" mitered border. Honestly it just happened, I just made a whole lot of tiny blocks, sewed them all together and only have 5 left. The corners each have one tiny block. The next one is larger and havent even begun to figure out how to fit the corners. I will work of them tomorrow. I love the colors in your quilt and Dawn's too they are beautiful quilts. Thanks for sharing