I agree 4th.

The light solid fabric is what is drawing my eye away from the top. I wouldn't use that light solid color as part of the border. The darker bands with the large dark design fabric looks the best to me. Even just the border being a wide piece of the large dark design fabric looks balanced with the top's light background.

a lot of quilters make their blocks to fit the mattress only and add borders. so don't sweat that. I still like the larger border with the black print. so go with one that has that.

I think you're trying to add way too much border and it'll dwarf the blocks. I'd only add enough border so that the quilt hangs just below the bottom of the mattress and put a bed skirt on the box springs.

Thank You all. I agree that I need to make a smaller border on this quilt. I have removed the light fabric. I also think the flying geese are a good idea. I am not very good at doing that but maybe a 4" rope will do the same thing. This is a quilt my grand daughter asked me to make her. I think in the future I need to stay with kits because I know what they will look like. This has been too stressful for me so for the last two days I made a quilt of valor to donate to take my mind off of it.

The colors that I don't like in the finish are the blue and the black/gold print. I think that instead of just doing strips for 19 inches you might have a better balanced quilt by adding narrow strip(s) then a sashing made up of some sort of block or fyling geese of the remaing colors and finishing with borders and ending with a binding of either black or the maroon or whatever that rose color is. Your blocks are so stunning you don't want to lose them in a large field.

I like the last picture. think it is beautiful joyce j

I think the 19" border moves the top design to far away. Have you thought about making a smaller version of the stars (maybe 6") and putting them offset in the border? My avatar has the stars offset in the border. Then you could put a set of stripes on the top and bottom of the border to get the depth you want.

19 inches does sound like a lot of border. have you thought of adding a pieced row in there?

I agree. 19 inches is a lot of border. I like the light colored strip around the perimeter, it makes the top seam to "float" within the borders. I would increase that border by 2 inches and quilt some kind of beautiful feather design. I think that I would use a pieced border of simple, but not too simple, stars with colored strips above and below them on the top and bottom of the quilt only, about 6inch stars with 2inch strips above and below. (10 inches). I would put 10inch stars in the corners.The last border would be 7 inches of the dark brown fabric. It seems like a very wide border, again a place for beautiful feather quilting,but with such a large quilt I think that it needs an "anchor". I would bind it with the same dark brown.
You have put so much work into your beautiful quilt top, don't just slap on strips and call it quits. Go the extra mile and make a border worthy of the top, not overpowering, just special.