Saturday, March 5, 2011

star quilt: planning the borders

C doesn't sleep with a lot of bedding, so this quilt will instead be something he can wrap in while reading or watching a movie on a winter night. But the center block section is only 3'X4', which is too small. Adding plain fabric borders is the easiest way to enlarge a quilt like this, so over breakfast with a couple of quilting friends this morning, I scratched out an idea.
This was to be a blue 3" border to float the star blocks in, a thin yellow border for contrast, and a wide, dark blue border to really give it some width. I knew I had fabrics at home which would work for this.

At home, I laid whole pieces of fabric on top of each other to see how it looked.
Answer: awful.

There were so many blues in the star block backgrounds that the single shade looked muddy and out of place. I wondered about using only the yellow and the dark celestial print. The yellow did pop the stars out and unified the blocks nicely, but with only two colors, the darker border would have to be disproportionately large. I also found it a little boring.
We were surprised to realize that we all liked this last version best. DH felt it was like looking into a cloudy night sky and on up to the stars.
I wouldn't have thought putting a blue against another blue would be the smartest choice but after all, this is a quilt of only two colors. So unless I have a change of heart overnight, that's the plan. Perhaps the next blog post will include a photo of the finished top. :)

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