Thursday, July 11, 2013

Border tryouts

While I was choosing the border for the Double Anvil quilt I made quite a few units  in other colour ways.  Once I could visualise what something would look like, but now I need to make a sample and look at it for a while before I decide if that's really what I want. 
 There are usually multiple attempts, so I've accumulated a box of border samples, and I keep them all stored away for future use.
If I think a quilt might need a border of squares on point, I pull out my box and try all the samples strings of squares. 
They are all different sizes, and that helps give me an idea of what scale I want the border to be, and whether I want the squares dark or light. 
The colours aren't important, I'm just checking what sizes might work.  If I put them on my design wall and take a photo I can convert it to black and white, so all I'm seeing is the overall effect, without the distraction of jarring colours.
I have strips of double pink and red and green and mustard and cheddar and sky blue, so I can audition colours for small borders without dragging out lengths of fabric.
I even have a couple of sets of strips for borders, that I cut and changed my mind about.  I can quickly audition them as well.
I have sets of triple sashing that I can experiment with too, in three colourways.
I've tried out a few of these zigzags too.
And there are lots of HST variations to play with;
there are so many ways to put these together, I'm glad I have a lot of them so I can try several things at once.


These 6 patches are discards from an old abandoned project; rather than put them in the orphan box I can use them to make a quick checkerboard border.
I really don't mind having all these bits and pieces, but after the last effort I think I need a bigger box!





6 comments:

  1. this just made me smile! having sample border ideas who else would have thought of this
    brilliant!
    Kathie

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great idea Keryn. Must give it a go myself.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A unique idea to have border samples stored for testing out the waters on how you might want to create borders for a quilt.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you for this idea. I never would have thought of it. I enjoy all of your projects and follow your posts.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great idea, nice way to use orphan blocks and left overs. In 100 years to come another quilter that finds your border sample box will be scratching her head trying it figure out what you were making!

    ReplyDelete