Border Help!

What about a narrow-ish border and then a row of clamshells in a contrasting fabric (maybe making the clamshells round end to round on the middle of each side to make it different looking???) and then another two borders? You could tie in that final row of clamshells with the colors in one of the borders. That's about all I can think of to avoid a humongous border- even if it's made of of several varying border widths it prolly wouldn't look right. Good luck- I'm sure it's gorgeous from seeing your other quilted projects!

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

While visiting an amish quilt shop last week, we noticed that they were sellling a lot of quilts with plain, wide borders quilted in a channel fashion. Most of the quilts had pieced tops, but everything on the sides was the plain border, sort of like this one:

Maybe you could do something similar. They looked really nice!

I'm replying before reading the others Joan, so that I don't get diverted!

I would do the two borders as shown - a narrow and a wider, in the colours you have; but retain (or buy) enough for them to be repeated outside a pieced border of individual Drunkard's Path blocks. Someone here did a most beautiful DP border with the blocks on point. I have it drawn out, but cannot remember who it was (sorry), so I can't direct you to a picture. It is lovely. Then one you have done the DP 'strip', another narrow and another wider border. All these straight borders could be of a width to suit what you need to add.

I don't think it would matter if the fabrics were different, as the ones in the picture, at least, are widely different. . In message , joan8904 in Bellevue Nebraska writes

Joan I have no really helpful suggestions, just some empathy. I'm working on a similar problem. My mattress is 18" thick. I have the quilt top done, and I'm working on an extra set of the same blocks for a 9" pieced border, but I'm still waffling on what I'm going to do to fill up the other 9 inches. It would be easier if I could put the pieced border in the middle of 2 plain borders, but to make my 9" block border fit right I need 9" in between it and the top. I'm thinking of 3 strips of 3" borders with the center of the 3 being pieced as well. Maybe echoing the smaller sections of the 9" blocks. Seems like the border has become more work than the top. I need 44 9" blocks to go around! Yikes! I got the first 22 done last night. Hopefully I'll get a start on the second set of 22 tonight. Then try to decide about the middle. At least so far I am not out of fabrics to do this with.

Good luck with your dilema.

Marilyn in Alberta, Canada

Can you do something like this? X represents a block, - and | represent 3" borders. This just shows a corner. I hope it makes sense. ||X|XXX ||X|XXX ||X|XXX ------- ||X|XXX ------- -------

Julia > Joan

Joan how about a wide border with a staggered column of clamshells on the long sides, a single row on the short? (Staggered column = first clamshell, slightly off center to left, then the one that joins to the right, back to under the first and so on.) If the border shells are in the same color range even with different fabrics it should be okay.

Pati, >

Nope, I would need 9 inches between the center of the quilt and the 9" block border or I will have to do some fancy math to make spacers to fit between blocks. That might look odd as the quilt top is 2 alternating blocks. I was going to continue that in the border with alternating the 2 blocks. I did think that if I run out of steam for this project I might do a 3" strip then a 6" strip then my 9" blocks. My 9" blocks are made up of pieced 3" squares, then sewn together like a 9 patch. So I thought I might do a 3" plain strip, then a repeat of one of the

3" pieced squares, then another 3" plain strip then my 9" alternating blocks. Then a plain binding. I have already quilted the top. I'm planning to add the borders kind of quilt-as-you-go-style. So before I do any binding I will put it on the bed and make sure it still covers the top mattress. If not I guess I could put another 3" stip on before binding. This is turning out to be one huge quilt! 99 x 107 less shrinkage for quilting. I will post pics when it's done. The top is on my webshots in the quilts 2008 folder. Thanks for giving it some thought for me.

Marilyn in sunny Alberta, Canada