Quilting the border

Starlit Picnic is almost ready for a photo shoot.  I just finished quilting the border and just need to choose a binding.

Though I had planned to continue grid quilting in the borders, I hesitated.  That was a clue that perhaps it wasn't the right choice.  After much pondering, I decided more grid quilting might be a bit too heavy. 

 I considered some ruler work, but my machine isn't liking that right now, skipping stitches when I quilt in a few different directions.  Hopefully a visit to the sewing machine spa will take care of that problem, but I couldn't wait that long to finish this quilt.

When I looked though Melissa Marginet's book Walking Foot Quilting Designs for inspiration, a square cable design caught my eye.  It till seemed too grid-like, but it did get me thinking about cables.  I looked through my small collection of rarely used quilting stencils and I actually had one that would fit the space.  I also like that the points in the cable tie in to the points in the stars.

I had to add some straight line frames to fill in the width of he border.  Repeating the spacing from the sashing quilting did the trick and also tied the border quilting to the rest of the quilting.  Just like I planned it!

Figuring out how to adjust the pattern repeat as I traced the stencil almost brought this plan to a halt, but walking away, having a good meal, and coming back to it worked wonders.  When I got back to it, I found my math was right after all and I got the cables to go around the corner properly and everything.  I'm still not sure what I was doing wrong on my first try.

I quilted this cable with my walking foot, in four passes around the quilt.  I'm so pleased with how it looks!

Now, should I bind in the same blue as the border, or with a bright green scrappy binding?  I had planned the green, but I wonder if that will look good with the cable.  I suppose Step 1 is to check if I have enough of the blue.  I might have to go with bright green by default.