Around the Corner — Flowers for Kate

My friend Kate commented on a quilt illustration I drew in EQ7, shown in my last post with two other designs. The three designs all use the same strategy.  The first main border wraps blocks around the center’s corners, leaving the middle of the border unpieced. The effect seems to strengthen and extend the center block.

This is the quilt design she commented on:
She said, “I like the second one, with the bear paws. Depending on the colours you used, it could either be spiky and rugged or feathery and delicate.”

Huh… Let’s see what happens when I change the colors…

I changed the colors, but that’s not all. The center block now is 4 blocks, separated by a narrow sashing. In the borders, the tulip blocks touch each other, rather than being separated by the narrow spacer blocks that give the bear’s paw effect. And besides the lighter, brighter colors, the change in blocks gives a more feminine tilt, too.

Otherwise the design is the same. The total size for both is 72″; border widths and lengths are the same; and the basic layout is the same.

Which one do you like better? Do you have other ideas for the same border device? 

Around the Corner

I’m trying to finish my Branching Out challenge quilt before Monday’s guild meeting. Once I’m done with it, I won’t get to do much quilting for the rest of the month or into August. These are a couple of weird, fragmented months, and I have much to do besides sew.

In the meantime, I continue to look for inspiration and ideas. While rolling though some googled images the other day, I noticed a handful of medallion quilts that had something in common. For each, the first border wrapped blocks around the center’s corners, leaving the middle of the border unpieced. The effect was to strengthen and extend the center block.

I drew some examples in EQ7 to save as reminders, and possibly as designs. They have a western or southwestern feel, masculine and rugged, but the idea is valid regardless of style or format. It could work just as well for a block quilt’s borders as for a medallion.

The first two illustrations don’t use exactly the same effect as the googled images, since they both have a narrow first border, followed by the block-wrap. In addition, my drawings repeat the corner design, which wasn’t used in what I saw elsewhere. Drawing in EQ7 leaves some “piecing” lines where I wouldn’t actually piece. Also all of the sizing isn’t exactly how I would make it in real life.

This is the center block.

This kind of corner gives a couple of positives. First, I like the way the fancy corners connect the rings of the quilt differently than with a more typical border/corner design. Second, the length of the border isn’t dependent on the length of the blocks in it. For example, in the second quilt above, the grey-blue strip between pieced brown blocks acts as one long spacer strip, and its length doesn’t need to be a multiple of the pieced block length or width. That makes it easy to adjust for odd border lengths.

Though these corners are a little showy, they don’t call attention to themselves, but contribute to the unity of the whole quilt. The repetition of the corner treatment in each design adds to that effect.

I don’t know if I’ll ever make any of them, but they have design elements that are worth remembering.