Adding Borders to Textile Art

Adding borders to hand (dye) painted fabric

Te trad Colour Scheme

Can you believe that each 'flying goose' (one triangle on the dark rectangle) is made by sewing one seam! It's as if magic happens when you unfold it. This technique was taught to me by the 'Lumberyard Teachers' Patty Bower and Cheryl Coffman. Thank you!!! Just the right technique for a sewer with limited time.

Choosing the colours for the borders took some thought. When painting the fabric piece I choose a tetrad colour scheme: Spring Green with Fuchsia and Blue with Orange Yellow (note previous post for the reasons I choose those colours).

I wanted the focus of the Prickly Pear piece to be it's fuchsia fruit so I knew my colour choices for the border needed to always be aware of that. Therefore I choose the fuchsia's complement the spring green to use in the border. Having a little amount of a complementary colour draws attention to itself. No, those greens in the border are not pure spring green but they are both tones of spring green. A tone has the addition of grey. One border fabric colour has more white in it and the other more black in it.

My challenge fabric (fabric given to me to be included in a quilted piece)was the topaz (a shade of orange yellow). I considered it and the fuchsia as narrow inner borders but liked the idea of including the colours into the pieced border as interpretive extensions of the cactus and desert. I had also considered using the fuchsia and topaz exclusively as the piece border however that would likely have placed the spring green of the cactus in a place of importance and I really wanted to highlight the fuchsia.

Colour choice can be intuitive but colour theory can help you to make your choices and help you to feel confident about the colour choices you make.