Understanding Borders

Having a pretty border sampler full of great ideas is all well & good, but now that I have them — what do I do with them??????

Although the answer, add them to your needlepoint, is obvious, it helps lots if you understand the different kinds of borders so you can decide how a border is best used for your project.

Most of the time borders surround the design on all four sides. The way they do this can take several forms. A flow border, ABOVE, continues in one interrupted piece around all four sides. These borders look as if the needlepoint was inserted into a piece of fabric.

A mitered border (picture frames are mitered) has diagonal lines at the corners and the border turns around these points, as in the picture above. Not all stitches work well mitered.

A lapped border, has two sides that overlap the other sides. Each side of the border is stitched as if it were an area of the canvas. This the an easy type of border to stitch, but it is also the least common border seen, probably because it can have a rustic look.

You can also vary the border in different ways. You can have multiple borders, above.

You can make the sides of the border uneven, above.

You can include the borders on two sides of the design. This creates a more modern look.

You can also inset other stitches into the corners. This is one of my favorite border treatments and you can see it on many of my projects including Jubilee, Winter Stars, and the Small Stitch Samplers (all available here).

It’s also possible to create an exciting border where only part of the border is present. This is called an implied border. If you have only the corners present, the sides are implied, above. If you have only the sides, the corners are implied, below.

I hope this gives you some ideas for using the new borders we are learning.