Coping Columns

 If you've been quilting any time at all, I bet you know all about coping strips. If you don't know, coping strips are often used when you need to add a pieced section to something that's a different size. For example, if you pieced a border, but it came out larger than your quilt center, whether through a math error or piecing error, you'd have to add coping strips to make it fit correctly. To a non-quilter, coping strips just look like an inner border or accent piece. You need not correct their assumption 😉

A couple posts ago, I showed this center I was playing around with, trying to use up leftover Celtic knot pieces.

My top and bottom sections are wider than my center panel. I need to add something to make them the same width. I also need to add something to the width of the whole thing, because right now it's setting up to be too narrow for the height and it looks wrong. Borders won't work, because then it will retain the same tall, skinny profile, but it would be even taller. I need to add something to the sides before borders. 

I decided to add columns on both sides of the center. I did the math to figure out how tall my columns would be, then I could figure out the coping strips to surround that center panel. I needed 2.5" cut strips on the sides to make the center panel as wide as the top and bottom sections, but I needed 3.5" cut strips above and below the center panel so the whole center section would be the same height as my columns.

You can tell if you are looking for it, that the top and bottom border on the center panel are wider than the sides, but it's not glaringly obvious. I think the side columns bring the quilt to much better proportions, and the outer border brings it all together and makes the whole thing look purposeful. Now it doesn't look like I was just trying to use up leftover bits from other quilts, even though that was exactly what I was doing. 

I was having the same proportion issue on one of my panel quilts. This one is for one my granddaughters, I used one large wolf panel from one line of fabric, and another panel of smaller wolf pictures from a different line of fabrics. The smaller panels had a lot more colors than the center panel, so I not only needed to add width, I needed to add more colors so the panels coordinated better. 

I decided I wanted blocks in my columns that were reminiscent of flowers since I was adding colors from the small panels, but wanting it to coordinate with the center panel which had a lot of flowers. 

I think my multi-colored columns definitely help bring cohesion to the quilt, and aside from the background fabric, the columns are all scraps. Again, I managed to sneak scraps into what is not really a scrap quilt. I made the top and bottom periwinkle borders a bit wider than the sides, because the quilt was exactly the width I wanted, but I wanted it two inches taller. 

Would you ever just add columns to the sides of a quilt center, or add rows just to the top and bottom, or even just to one side if it got the top to the correct dimensions? If these look unbalanced to you, what would you have done instead?