Binding thoughts?

John, I have been thinking about this project for a while. We have all been concentrating on the mechanics of doing the binding with pieced diagonal seams and all, but I would like to go back to the original..... Is this complex, busy binding really going to complement the rest of the quilt?? Or will it distract from the main part of the quilt? As I recall, you are planning on putting the binding directly onto a sashed border, which is fairly narrow. I am thinking that while a pieced, striped binding would help tie into a center when a wide, solid fabric border is used, that in this case it might actually be a distraction from the main part of the quilt. (JMHO) I am thinking that with the quilt you described this complex binding would not necessarily be the optimal finishing touch. A simple binding might be a better solution, in spite of the fun a pieced binding might be.

Pati, > >>

I know what you mean. I have lived in and rebuilt an awful lot of old houses. I am not talking about the honest settlement, with the passage of time. What I was commenting on was, you walk into a room and one picture is a little askew. It is the first thing I see. Even if it is your house, I might quietly go over to it and straighten it for you. the Vent stack on the roof is one of my pet peeves. It usually comes from sloppy workmanship. Say you want to install a fireplace in the room. You find the place that works esthetically and then you proceed to drill a hole in the ceiling and come "pretty close" to vertical. Then you discover that there is a ceiling joist in the way of the hole so you move the hole over a little to clear the joist. then you find that the roof rafter is a little bit in the way. You move that hole over just a little bit and proceed through the roof. By the time you get done doing that, the resulting chimney flue is listing 20 degrees to port and looks like the mast of a ship beating to windward. But what do you care you live inside the house, and don't have to look at it. But the people who do, if they care to look at all, will think it was either done by a rank amateur, or worse that a homeowner paid to have it put in that way, which is even worse because they paid for a sloppy job. There is a proper way to hang a picture, and put in a chimney, and do so many other things that show the level of care and craftsmanship that was attendant to it's installation, that they are to numerous to mention. It usually doesn't cost a lot more to do it right, it just takes a little more care, or time. That is what I mean. I think the reason that I love to do traditional pieced quilting is that the more care that you give to the placement of the blocks and alignment of the points, the better it comes out with reference to the design. If I just haphazardly place a bunch of pieces that were not uniformly cut out into a piece of work and called it "Art" it does not do it for me. Of course, there is the exception, isn't there always, such as the crazy quilt. That is usually neither uniform or straigh, but does rise to the level of art, for me. I am not criticizing anybodies choice of design, that is personal, but for me, it has to be square and plumb or it ain't right. I used to get a kick out of all the money that was thrown at painters like Jackson Pollack who "painted" his masterpieces from atop a 10 foot ladder and dribbled the paint onto the surface below. That was some job of salesmanship on his part. If you can do the thing repeatedly more than once, then that is what I believe causes it to rise to the level of art, providing the design is good in the first place. If you can only do it once and not consistently do it again, well, it might be interesting, but it ain't art for me. There you have it. Of course others may quibble with my interpretation, I am not saying they have to agree, they just shouldn't expect me to get excited about that type of work.

John

On Dec 6, 12:25 pm, "Pati C." wrote:

The idea for this is to keep the color choices to the limit of what is already in place. that is red, blue, yellow, and white. The sashing is black. I don't want to introduce another color for a border or for the binding so I thought that the combination of all of the above colors would be an interesting resolution to the finishing off of this piece of madness. I didn't want to use black on the binding because it would visually bleed back into the sashing. This whole thing is done from a minimalist perspective, and therefore is governed by the rules of that game. I know there are no rules when it comes to this sort of thing, but I wanted to stay within the color boundaries that I chose and see what would happen. The barber pole idea for the binding is just a further extension of that color scheme, with a different twist to it, so to speak. I plan on making up a small piece of the barber pole binding and laying it in place to see the effect it will have. It will either work, or it won't. Then, I will either pull the trigger and do it, or pull the plug and go to some other solution. My design ideas tend to be thematic or at least uniform when it comes to color, so that is the thing that is driving this project. This quilt is actually for our bedroom to use on the bed during winter, as a second quilt for warmth. The main quilt on the bed is poly batting and this one is wool/ cotton and matches the current second quilt for construction and weight so that the combination of the two quilts should provide more warmth that the combination of the quilts we are currently using. The lighter quilt will be stored and used as a summer quilt. There you have the thoughts on color/design that drives this rather befuddled mind. A picture, when it is finished, will be the test of whether I was right, or horribly mistaken. Either way, It will keep me warm, and that is the primary purpose.

John

Another approach might be to cut the colors into 2" pieces +1/2" and sew them together straight into a 2.5inch binding strip. Then you wouldn't be introducing a diagonal into the equation, and it would repeat the color sequence of the main pattern. It would also allow you to more easily do a miter or lap corner as you see fit. See, choices, choices, choices. So many choices.

John

Howdy!

Binding thoughts, indeed, John.

2 meticulous mates bound by their innate obsessions. It's a good thing.

Or, as my mother would say: "Those 2 belong together; why ruin 2 other families?" LOL

Ah, obsessions: I've heard more than I can ever comprehend about tube amps, but my partner of 32+ yrs. has heard more than his share of quilting expertise & advice (bless his heart, he brags about me, too! ); he can tell the difference between handquilting & machine quilting at 5 paces. ;-D He also listens to my book critiques (there's a lot of junk out there getting published!) & when I mumble "It's 'me', not 'I', you eejit."

R/Sandy--quilting ties that bind...

12/6/07 7:46 AM, > >> Howdy!

Uh-oh! If you are going to do that, John, knowing your work just a tiny bit now, I would be very careful how you place those mitres - otherwise you are going to have one side where the binding pieces 'tally' with the inside squares, and the rest won't - or they'll be so nearly right, it will drive you potty. Would you consider doing without the mitre?

Another alternative no-one has mentioned I think is to have really long pieces of each colour, rather than small pieces. That way you could be sure to go round each corner in a single colour. The pieces would not need to be the same length and they could be joined with straight or diagonal seams. I have seen some done like that at shows and I really like the look. . In message , John writes

I am rethinking the miters and going with the lapped corner. I have done those on most of my quilts, and am happy with the look. I am also rethinking the barber pole and doing the straight 2" pieces. There would be no problem with those, I think.

John

Back in San Francisco, for about 30 years, I used to buy and sell Martin Guitars and other things like, Gibson Guitars, Mandolins, and Banjo's. I pretty much stayed with Acoustic stuff. I mainly did it so that I could have access to wonderful playing instruments. I had a large group of pawn shops that would stay on the lookout for the kind of thing I was looking for and they would call me and tell me when something was going to become available. I would swoop in with cash in hand and acquire a fine musical instrument and play it for awhile and then resell it to some musician that I came across, hopefully for a profit. I am aware of things like Fender Twin reverb amps and other tube curiosities, though I tended to avoid that end of the music scene. There were lots of musicians going bust in San Francisco, and their stuff all ended up in pawn shops. So I guess you could say I was involved in the recycling movement rather early on. Great fun.

John

John, if you're rethinking the barber pole, another option might be something I did once recently and liked a lot. That is, I took each of the four colors I wanted to use and bound half of one side, around a corner and half of the adjacent side with that color. Then I did the same with the next color, joining the second color to the first. I continued until the fourth color joined up with the first one halfway along the first side I'd done. So the end result was an L-shaped color (where each leg of the L was roughly equal) around each corner. The quilt is this one: , though it's difficult to see the binding in the photo.

I'm sure you will be happy with that, John. . In message , John writes