Thursday, December 23, 2010

What to do!

I'm stumped. This is directly from Karen Stone's New York Beauty book and I love it. BUT, it's small and I mean really small. It's barely lap size now and I need to put a border on it. While Karen's original NYB has an incredible pieced border, I already know I have no desire to do that. I'm not opposed to piecing a border but I'm about paper pieced out.

What to do?
1. Checkerboard border out of leftover fabric? Probably not.
2. Scalloped border to accent the curves? Probably not -- makes my palms sweat to think about it.
3. Different paper pieced border from Karen's book? Maybe but I haven't found one I really think works.
4. Nice inner border (or flange) to stop the design and a large print outer border and be done with it? That's where I'm leaning.

I want this done so I can start to fret about quilting it (another post for another day, I'm sure). I don't want it to languish in the closet unfinished...I adore the fabrics, I like the blocks b/c they're very non-traditional for a NYB, and I would love to have it at the foot of one of the beds. It will never grow up to be a quilt for a full size bed.

Suggestions? Opinions? Thoughts?

Keep piecing, Jan

3 comments:

Janet said...

What a gorgeous top, I think I have the pattern stashed away. I didn't realise it was that small. How about random squares of colours but made a-la nine patch or four patch. Another idea might be to put rectangles of fabics that are cut on the same angles as on the outer edges of the blocks going around the border but that might not make it big enough. I'd be googling NYB quilts to see what others have done, you may pick up an idea. Good luck.

Laurie said...

I'm amazed that you have gotten that far....I took a workshop from Karen last month. I've made 1 block and am not sure that I'll do a second....The first may become a pillow. Great top.

Alice G said...

If you use what you have as the center of a rectangle placed at the bottom of your bed: add a very abstract fan shape to each end. Then you could add strip (or strips ) of fabrics above and below the whole piece to tie the three pieces into one. I'm not sure that my words are describing what I'm seeing in my mind - I love your work.
Sincerely,
alice g.