Border Security

Whenever I have the opportunity, I like to watch the TV Show "Border Security". I guess it is a similar show all over the world where you are taken behind the scenes at Airports and other country entry points and are shown what people are trying to do illegally regarding Customs, Quarantine and Immigration.  I LOVE seeing bad people get caught! My faith in our national security has been restored watching that show!

Now that has nothing whatever to do with the types of borders I wanted to talk about but I like the title for this post! I thought this week it might be worthwhile giving you a few ideas of what you can do with borders around quilts, be they large or small. I like variety and I was actually surprised to see how many different types of borders I have used in my designs.

Let's start with the simple - a fabric border which picks up the colours used in the quilt and ties it all together:

(I actually chose the border fabric first, then used its colours for the appliques and embroidery.)

If you are using a range of co-ordinated fabrics in your project, the concept below works well. I had only fat quarters of this range, so there was nothing big enough to make a full length border. Rather than make a border of one fabric with lots of joins, I chose to use four different fabrics. I don't think it would have looked half so good if I had just used a different fabric on each side. By taking each fabric around the corners, a much more co-ordinated look was achieved:

Then there's fabric with a border print. This gorgeous rose border looks as though I have put four borders around the central butterfly square.  No, all the work was done when the fabric was printed. The only tricky bit is getting those mitred corners sitting perfectly:

The ends on the Country Fruit table runner below are a variation of the border print idea. I've used just a section of a border print and applied it only to the ends of the runner and not the sides:

Then there is embroidery. In Calista Cottage I wanted a contrast fabric between the red border and the red binding, but a plain cream border did nothing for the design. I chose to embroider scallops and flowers, echoing the colours used in the centre block and it gave the framing effect that I was after:

The Love Never fails quilt has eight little mini quilts, each with love sayings on them, which go in the centre of this quilt. Adding four more embroidered sayings in the second border brought harmony to the whole design:

 The brief for the design below was "Vintage". Cream cotton lace was the obvious choice for highlighting the rose stitchery:

Then of course there is applique. Wide borders lend themselves to this treatment, whether it be fusible web applique:

or needleturn applique, Suffolk Puffs and ric rac swags:

Co-ordinating fabric squares are always a winner. I would not normally do two borders of squares on a project but this one works because of the dark border separating them. To take the harshness off the dark fabric, I embroidered some lacy scallops which gave the softer effect that the design needed:

I hope this post has motivated you and given you the 'security' you need to try something different for your next border.

I've been making more items for my 'Fete' box and had fun with hessian/burlap and lace, constructed some mug rugs and now I'm onto some pretty key ring adornments. I'll share some photos next week.

Happy stitching!

Val