bindings matter

Have you ever bought a quilt top?

I did, quite a few years ago now. It was a well constructed and colourful quilt top, a variation of Kaffe's 'Fonthill Quilt' pattern. I purchased it at an Auckland Quilt Guild show, but I don't know who the original maker was. I finally had it quilted by Annette and then it languished unfinished in the depths of the wardrobe for some time, not forgotten but not a priority. I always had every intention of finishing it... one day!

Binding is the last stage in finishing off any quilt, but I was a bit blocked here on just what to use. The fabrics in the quilt were all pre-modern - there were quite a few dark smoldering blues, dusky pinks, tone-on-tone batiks, vintage greens & mint-y greens, and an old fashioned lovely cheddar yellow! I didn't want anything that was too different from the era of these fabrics, and, while I loved all the colour, I also felt it needed something to lift the 'heaviness' of it all.

Bindings do matter, and I just needed to be clear on what final fabric statement I wanted to add here. Did I want the binding to stand out? or to be more complimentary? or to just quietly fade away totally into the quilt? 

So I liaised with my 'personal colour consultant' (aka my daughter) and we had a fun afternoon together auditioning a few fabrics from my stash. A scrappy binding was out of the question, I didn't have any of the original fabrics in the quilt...

- this was the closest fabric in my stash to any of those used in the quilt

Stripes have always been a favourite option of mine and so we looked at a few Denyse Schmidt ones that I had here on the shelf... and a couple of 'older' small floral & geometric prints... and then a Denyse Schmidt aqua dot that seemed to almost disappear totally...

... so, not an easy decision at all! 

We finally settled on a multi coloured Denyse Schmidt stripe. 

Have a little look...

I found a few useful tips & tricks for binding on Rita's post here
and check out this post for more great info on quilt bindings

-close up of backing

-close up of the 'twirling vine & leaf' quilting

I felt the stripe worked quite well in the end - it seemed to pick up all the lighter tones in the quilt, it shifted the focus slightly onto the mint-y greens rather than on all those darker blues, and it also helped to link up all that yellow somehow. You can see what I mean in these last few pics...

a bit more # 38

if you recognise this quilt as the one you pieced

- I'd love to hear from you! 

EDIT: I found out who pieced my quilt

- Juliet Taylor