Art Quilting Basics part four-borders

    Ok, it's time for me to tell you about one of my biggest secret weapons: borders. If you have a traditional quilting background, you are probably quite familiar with borders, but maybe not the way I do them 😂 Borders are another kind of 'cheater' method for making art quilts look more complicated than they are. My borders are rarely symmetrical. I often have different colors or sizes on different sides of my quilts. But if you use enough borders, which are more familiar for you traditional quilters, it minimizes the space you have to fill with the 'art' part. How's this for a cheater art quilt? A rubber stamp, about 4 inches tall, (by local Fairbanks artist Maggie Hallam), the rest is basically borders. 😂 (terrible photo though, wow...😭) And a potholder made in a similar way. (Mostly decorative, thanks to all the buttons. They’re metal, and pretty flat though) The crane quilt has asymmetrical borders, with decorations added to some.  

    Sometimes there's a bit of overlap between what is considered a border and a background, but it doesn't really matter what it's called. It's just another fairly easy way to add size and interest to an otherwise very simple quilt. As usual, this is just the tip of the iceberg for borders, there are lots of other ways to be creative with them! Just another thing for you to consider if you are designing one. I hope you are beginning to see that once you start breaking down the parts, they're not as complicated as they might appear at first.
      Next week we'll talk a bit about color, another area that can be either really fun, or really challenging! Happy sewing,
​ Beret