Usually an applique border is best on an applique quilt, and a pieced one with pieced blocks. I have seen artistic pieced work around applique, especially when there is some piecing in the block, but an ornate vine or scallop border around a homey pieced center is as out of keeping as a massive gold frame on a chaste little etching.
There are original borders on many quilts of later day resulting from women’s devel- oped sense of design. An enclosure around angular or erratic forms, such as pieced blocks often are, sustains the whole. I well remember a testy old art teacher’s example of that; the question was on rug design, as to what relation the border should bear to the pattern. “We students must have all looked blank because he immediately hammered a desk with his cane and queried, “Well, well, if you had a bull in a pasture, should the bull or the fence be stronger?”
So we have designed “strong” borders of twining vines, of little flowers with spreading leaves and such.
On our embroidered flower garden quilt there is a patch picket border, and around the “Farm Life” group of picture patterns a pieced rail fence, which literally holds in their places all the pigs and poultry. This quilt is far from a conventional classic, but for a child, a boy who loves the farm, or even for a man who thinks he does, it will receive more appreciation than a “Wedding Ring”!
For a high four poster, the valance or flounce like they originally used to hide the stored chests or trundle bed beneath, is a finish in keeping. Many well dressed beds choose this fulled finish which adds to the quilted counterpane for beauty’s sake. A 3-inch plaited ruffle is lovely on silk quilts or comfortlike puffs. Bound scallops are good, even on wash quilts and some antique quilts as well as quilted white counterpanes boast a fringe.
However the usual final finish to the quilted top is a binding. One yard of material cut on the true bias into strips about 1 1/2 inches wide will bind a straight edge quilt, but allow one half yard more for scallop edge, or if you want less, piecing. This is usually machine stitched around on the wrong side, to bring over the top, crease back to seam and whip down on the front.