Patriotic Panel Border Ideas?
 

Good morning! My sweet husband has picked out a patriotic panel and wants me to turn it into a quilt. Does anyone have any ideas about what to border the panel with? I've never done one of these, just mainly traditional quilts. It's of a beautiful eagle and had picked out 3 coordinating fabrics to go with it. We've only been married for 1 1/2 years and I've been quilting for about 11 so he is new to the quilting world but is learning about it thru me! Which I am very excited about! Thanks for any input!

You need to decide first how large you want the finished quilt to be. Then you need to square up your panel, be aware that panels are rarely printed on straight of grain. so just square it up as best you can. This usually involves trimming a bit off all four sides of the panel.

Once you have done these two things you can do it as simply as just putting successive rounds of fabric on your panel, like solid borders until it is up to size, or you can build it up to size by adding borders of pieced blocks round robin style like I did with this panel quilt:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]546588[/ATTACH]
I started with that narrow strip of black to get a size evenly divisible by the block sizes I wanted. I should note that you don't have to have the rounds be the same dimensions. On this one the black top and bottom strips were narrower than the side strips. Then I drafted the two different tree blocks, one for the sides and a different one for top and bottom. Then another strip of fabric (the leaf print, again this strips of leaf print were wider on the sides and narrower top and bottom) then a row of log cabin blocks, then a wide strip of the green fish fabric, then the pieced fish blocks finished off with the blue fish fabric.

Your options are limited only by your imagination.

I look at what other quilter's have done with panels on Google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=patr...HYFCCpQQsAQIHA

Squaring up a panel sometimes is not an option, you might be cutting into the pattern. I have made several quilts from panels and I add borders until it's the size I want it. One thing to keep in mind. Most panels are longer than wider so I add more yardage to my width of the quilt than the length. If that bothers you then I would suggest you stay clear of panels.

I haven't done too many panels, but I just keep adding borders until I am happy with it or until it is the size I want. Like this one.

Just go for it. It is actually a bit fun and quick. :)

Dina

My husband is also a new quilter. He made this top, with a little assistance from me. But he did make the blazing star blocks all by himself, even matched the points really good. [ATTACH=CONFIG]546598[/ATTACH]It's waiting for me to quilt it.

That is beautiful! He did a good job....and you are a good teacher. :)

Dina

I used the Google image search.... Patriotic Panel quilts These are the amazing results.

https://www.google.com/search?site=&...88.oHyUS7HAIE8

feline fanatic, I love your quilt, very nice work on all the quilts, but i really love the log cabin look.