Borders for Your Little Quilts

I love making scrappy quilts with simple blocks and lots of different prints. Overall, I think scrap quilts work better if they're kept simple. I will sometimes use a busy print for the borders, but even then I tend to be conservative and often go with a smaller print or a calmer fabric so the border doesn't take away from the main part of the quilt and compete for attention. Decide whether you want the border to shine or the quilt center to stand out. A busy border print would not have worked on this quilt.

The busy floral border works on this quilt because the center is very simple.

If everything in the quilt is too busy, the eye won't know where to look and will dart back and forth between the center and the border. That's why I chose a relatively non-busy border for the quilts below. From a distance they almost look solid.

If your blocks are very scrappy and busy, inner borders can sometimes help the transition between the blocks and the border and pull the whole thing together.

Even with the inner border below, I still used a calm, non-busy border to make the scrappy center stand out more.

If you're familiar with my books you know that I often like to use 2 different prints for the borders of my quilts--old doll quilts were often made this way.

But it just doesn't work in the little quilt I made below. Believe it or not, I make mistakes sometimes (Horrors!). I just don't usually show you the bad ones, LOL. I think the border prints here are much too busy and compete with the blocks too much. I also didn't use enough contrast in two of the blocks. And that green stripe! What was I thinking?? This is why I stick with blue. I know blue. Blue is a friend of mine. But I love that pink and black print.

So I never finished the above quilt because I didn't like it and it just isn't right somehow. This is a really ugly little quilt! Maybe I should take the blocks apart and start over because I really like them, just not how I put the rest of it together. The different borders work much better in this one:

Antique quilts often were made without any borders. You can choose to go without a border . . .

 . . . or just add them on the top or sides for a fun accent.

I'm no expert, but I think I've learned a lot over the years just looking at quilts--both antique and modern--trying different things and coming up with what's pleasing to me. Make sure you audition your borders--try out several prints before you settle on one. Sometimes the one you least expect will be the one that works.