Wedding Preparations: Guest Book

I am posting this in the interest of supporting the effort to include more discussion of the process of quilting.

I am working on the 'guest book' for my niece's wedding. It is another signature quilt, similar to the one for mom's 80th birthday party.


Here are some of the cousin's signing in. That one worked out nicely with just a binding. For some reason, the new one is not cooperating. I think it is the proportions. I am making it a bit bigger since there will be more guests. It turned out a bit more of a square.

wide border

This half-square triangle thing is funny because you end up with two sides that are essentially white and two sides that are essentially dark. In the case of the wedding quilt, the colors are all pretty dark so it reads essentially as an all blue side. What that means is that a binding that looks great on one side looks meh on the other.

narrow border

I have pretty much decided that I am going to use this batik for the border and probably use the solid blue for the binding. But I am torn about how wide I need to make the border. The two shots above (quick rather than artful) show a wider and a narrower border. Or.. I could go scrappy by cutting the remaining 5" blocks in half and sewing them all together or I could use white or, or, or.... Suggestions appreciated. I am running out of time!

One more quick note. This is my third signature quilt. Rather than provide blocks or squares of fabric at the event to be assembled and finished later, I have finished the quilt entirely ahead of time. I do that because I work much better on deadlines and I know the quilt will be done and out of my hands by the day of. I also do that because I don't want to deal with frayed edges and writing in the seam allowance. The thing that makes this work is these gel fabric pens. (No relation to Pentel; stock, employment, advertising or otherwise.) They write smoothly and don't bleed through so the finished quilt looks good.