Looking back through old blogs, I found that I started my blue Kyoto Gardens quilt over a year ago, on January 20th, 2012. That is by no means the longest time one of my quilts has been in progress, but I have decided it is time for it to be done. All it needs now are borders.
I finally settled on a border of squares on point and realized I could just replace the pieced units in the pattern’s border with plain squares and not have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. The inner border, square and setting triangles measurements are already in the pattern.
Sunday I spent a few hours cutting blue squares and white/cream setting triangles. I put the squares up on the design wall around the quilt center and decided they just didn’t suit the quilt. The scale was all wrong. I went to bed.
Yesterday I reasoned that perhaps once the border was assembled and seam allowances were used up, the scale might work better, so I sewed and sewed. After assembling one side I put it up beside the quilt center and still felt it didn’t work but by that time I had enough units assembled that I figured I might as well complete the borders and save them for a future quilt.
Late last night it occurred to me that perhaps the problem was that the squares on point didn’t look good too close to the center. My design wall isn’t big enough for a twin size quilt so the borders were closer to the center than they would be once the plain inner border was added. I took everything down from the wall and spread it out on the floor, laying out scraps of fabric to stand in for the inner border.
The top and bottom inner borders are wider to accommodate the length of the pieced side borders, but it seemed like too big a chunk of empty white space so I tried adding a strip of blue to break it up. I might add a small white border all around to float the squares, then bind in blue. Or maybe a wider blue border all around?
I think this might work, though this morning I wondered if the squares compete too much with the quilt center. And then I liked it again. And then I waffled again. Any comments?
I think maybe the squares in the border are too large in comparison with the pieced centre squares and they overwhelm it?
ReplyDeleteI think it's beautiful just like you have it! Great quilt, and I love the colors. ---"Love"
ReplyDeleteI agree with Love. It looks great! You can add another white or blue border around that if you want to or if you want it a little bigger, but I don't think it's necessary.
ReplyDeleteI like the big squares in the border and the white around. The little strip of blue is great too. I think the squares, while larger than the scale of the pieces in the center, allow the eye somewhere to rest a bit, as there's a lot going on in the center portion. But they also allow and make your eye want to focus on the center, where all the beautiful piecing happened. And I haven't seen anything you've put together that looks anything but goergous, so whatever you end up doing we all know it will be amazing!
ReplyDeleteHave you considered adding another plain border of white after the pieced border? It might help balance it all out. I just love the white border and the blue border on point. I see a blue binding. Keep up the good work, one less UFO in the bin.
ReplyDeleteLooks to me as though you have saved the day with this layout. The strips of blue top and bottom break the wide-ish white border just as you anticipated. I think it looks terrific! Your signature blue really shines in this quilt.
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