It ain’t over till the Fat Lady sings…

How often do we finish stitch the last block of a quilt and decide we’re done? All that’s left is to add some borders, then it’s ready to sandwich, quilt and bind. Nearly done!

WRONG!

Of a quilt top the borders are the song! They unify the central design through colour, style and size. Borders can transform a quilt from ordinary to extraordinary. Some general guidelines:

Colour: the colours used in the border should be the same as those used in the central design
Style: the style/design of the border should mirror/enhance/ highlight a design element in the quilt top
Size: the size of the borders should measure half that of a block in the quilt. For example, if your blocks are 12″, then the borders should measure 6″ all around.

The task this month is to complete the Circle Challenge, so I thought I would show you how I put my quilt together.

I decided not to sew up my quilt as a traditional 3 x 4 quilt top with sashings between the blocks, but to rather have the arrangement completely random. I also continued with my theme of using up all my scraps in the spaces between the blocks.

I then added a border strip to that.

For the next border I needed to decide on size, style and colour.

A general rule is that your borders should be 1/2 the size of a block. For example, these blocks were designed to be 12″ finished. Therefor the borders should be 6″ all around.

However, with my quilt top I no longer have blocks, but rather floating circles! These then determine the size of the border. Here I made up circles in proportion to a 12″ block – 4″ circles. TOO SMALL! Wrong proportion!

This was a better size. But to have “dots” around the quilt made a busy quilt top even busier!
Preferred this arrangement but proportion wrong!
Proportion better but still dotty!

Proportion much improved. Style improved too
How to make the border “flow” around the corner?
Even though I have used stars in my circles it does not work having them on the corners!