Quiltingboard Forums - Remember the "Let's play pick the border thread"

I got a really great response from everyone on that thread. I had three different borders posted for my Palm Tree landscape quilt. A red "sunset" border, a blackish border (the same fabric used in the palm bark), and a purple border.

Several liked the red. Several said the red looked out of place because there was no red in the quilt itself.

Several liked the blackish border. Several said the black made the whole quilt look too dark.

Several liked the purple border. Several said that because the only purple that was in the quilt was horizontal at the mid point it looked like the quilt was two quilts in two frames.

I had also auditioned several fabrics myself and wasn't falling in love with any of them. Green infringed on the palm fronds. Beige looked like the sand was creeping up the top of the quilt. Blue just looked odd (kind of like the purple).

Well ... you were ALL right. There was not ONE single border that was going to work.

So I decided on .... a pieced border. I went to my border book, flipped through and found the perfect border that mimicked the two twisted palms. Once I found that border pattern - the colors pretty much just flew into my hand. The blackish was an obvious choice and the brown and the beige were pulled from the colors in the black print. The beige is also used in the sand, but the brown was not used anywhere else.

Still need to trim the edges and the mitered corners are just basted right now - I see I need to adjust a few. I did lose a smidge of my actual design/quilt - but to get the miters to meet right it was either that or add coping strips to the sides only and that wasn't going to look right.

Thanks EVERYONE for all your help in pointing me in the right direction!!