Border Woes With a Happy Ending

Have you ever gotten carried away with an idea or experienced a "feeding frenzy" at the cutting table of a quilt shop? After picking a group of creamy neutrals, dark sage green and a beautiful burgundy batik for the sample quilt for the Pine Needle retreat quilt, at 2am I remembered this pretty pink, gray and green floral ... thought it would be great for the border ... stitched all the blocks ... put it on the design wall and as you can see, it was way beyond bad ... it was HORRID:

Why so bad? Well, the colors don't work at all, the texture/scale of the print doesn't relate to any of the blocks or sashing, nor does the mood of the print. So ... senior moment? brain freeze? Honestly, it didn't look this bad on the cutting table.


All is not lost since it's a lovely print that I'll use in another quilt. Let's try a near-white lacey print ... maybe that will work:

It's an improvement but is too flat texture-wise as well as too light in value. This border choice simply doesn't do anything for the quilt. Third time's the charm?

Much better! The photo, however, shows too much of this creamy Stonehenge fabric. It's essential to get the proportions right when adding borders. I love the marble texture of this print with the blocks and sashing and envision a large, contemporary feather in the border. Stay tuned for the final choices!