Bored With Borders Yet?

Not Me!
I love thinking up new and different types of borders. (Can you tell?!?)

So, I'm going to show you another border trick you might want to use some time....

First, let me tell you how it came about (it's one of those HAPPY ACCIDENTS that occur when you just GO FOR IT, trusting your creative instincts to lead you somewhere wonderful). ANYWAY... I was trying to come up with a good teaching project (something fun, slightly challenging but not hard,with fast results and yet adaptable to several color combinations - gee, that should be real easy, huh?).
While stitching PRIMROSE PATH, I enjoyed the floral tapestry pattern so much, I decided to use it in a smaller project. Since California Poppies were on my mind, I stitched this version first:


I jazzed up my usual plain satin stitched border with metallic insets. I liked it well enough, but it just wasn't as ELEGANT as I wanted it to be. I felt it needed SOMETHING, but I didn't know what exactly. Then I decided to try the "repeat border" technique I used on that green Diane Evans piece I showed you a few days ago.
Here's how it looked after I repeated the border:


Oooooooh....much better! See how I repeated the first border, but slightly darkened the orange colors, and expanded the corner sections so they echoed the first border? Suddenly, the piece had more elegance, more pizazz and definitely a more eye-catching border. (And see...I snuck in a narrow row of the variegated color - in between both borders, to pull the variegated colors out to the border, and also to create a calming rest between those two elaborate metallic borders.)

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!