EXACTLY 20-inch square

Yesterday I promised that I would finish the Monarch Challenge Quilt and, for the most part, I will…..

When I left you yesterday, everything was finished except for the binding.

But, before I could add binding, I needed to ensure that the quilt was going to be 20 inches square…..EXACTLY!!!

One of the big challenges of the Cherry Wood Challenge is that they have to be the EXACT size. You can understand that when you see the way that they are displayed…..

Now I had to figure out how I was going to finish the quilt…..if I used a facing, then the quilt would need to be cut at 20-1/2 inch because turning the facing will take away the 1/2 -inch.

However, IF I am going to bind the quilt, I need to trim it to 20-inches because once the binding is folded back over itself, it doesn’t take up any of the size.

Does that explanation make ANY sense???

Anyway….. I decided that a facing wouldn’t work well because of the bulk along the bottom where the leaves were. They would not have turned under well!!

So, after a lot of measuring, I carefully trimmed the quilt top, starting with squaring-up the bottom portion.

Then I measured up to the top-right corner and squared it further…..

Happily, it measured exactly 20-inches!!

I added the binding and set out to take photos so that I can enter it into the challenge.

What do you see when you look at this photo?

Does the bottom right corner stick out to you??

It certainly does to me and I feel sure that having such a bad (un-square) corner would immediately take me out of contention for acceptance.

So that means that there is ONE more thing to do before I can call this quilt finished…..

Come back on Tuesday and I PROMISE that it will be finished!!!

Michael and I love to travel and see new parts of the world and then I love to take those memories and turn them into quilts!!! I hope that you enjoy traveling along with us!!

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