Even though I haven’t shown you the rest of the quilting on this quilt, I just can’t wait to show you the finished product!!!

This quilt has been in process for several years but I only worked on it at guild retreats, and at least two of those retreats, it never came out of the box!!

So….I am thrilled to present……

The color placement of the red squares did exactly what I was hoping and I love the diagonal strips that show up in the design.

AND, the quilting made a huge difference…..

I had planned the circles around the red squares, but the other “phantom” circles took me by surprise!! I LOVE when that happens!!

I had hoped that this quilt would use most of my 2.5-inch squares, but alas there are still a LOT left….

So, now I am thinking about ANOTHER 2.5-inch square quilt and it is starting like this……

One reader has suggested that I may need to turn my theme from “Summer of the Scraps” to….

Keep coming back for more!!

So I asked if you liked the red border or not…..

I don’t know how to say this…..but you guys were useless!!

JUST KIDDING!!

The count was as close to 50-50 as it could be.

Most people who voted “no” said that it broke up the design too much and their eyes went straight to the border.

I can see that!!

My favorite comment from the pro side was from Lynne…… “it gives a resting place for your eyes and then the border become significant!”

Significant…..I like that!!

I could see that the bright red border might be distracting but what would it look like as a darker (burgundy red) border?

Maybe that wouldn’t draw the eye as much.

So, after a lot of going back and forth, I decided to move forward with the burgundy, but it was fraught with many perils, including tucks…..

…..and strips that were too short….

I had cut the strip 2-inches to begin with, but ended up taking off 1/4-inch to fix one of the issues!!

Now I had to figure out what to put in the corners….

In the final analysis, I decided to go with a solid square….

My only concern at this point was that I didn’t have much of that fabric left!! This was what went into the scrap bin…..

So, here is the final top…..

What do you think???

When I left you on Tuesday, all of the interior blocks were finished…..

….and it was time to think about the borders.

My initial thought was that I didn’t want anything complicated. I felt that it needed to be simple to not detract from the interior.

First thought was to simply use dark squares…..

NO….that looks horrible. They are too heavy for the rest of the quilt.

What if I make a checkerboard…..

Better, but still not right!

I started playing with triangles and came up with this idea….

OKAY……I sort of like that!!

But I felt that the background fabric was still a bit too dark. What if I make it lighter…..

NOW I am getting somewhere!!!

BUT…..of course there is a but…. I didn’t have enough of this fabric to piece the border!! SIGH!!

What happens if I use the slightly darker fabric inside the triangles….

THAT WILL WORK!!!

By this point, I had reorganized my 2.5-inch squares and sorted them by color……

….so I didn’t really want to jumble them up again.

Instead, I picked the colors that I wanted to work with and pulled out the exact number of squares that I needed for the border…..

It didn’t take long for me to have the half-square triangles made…..

…. and the border strips pieced together…..

They look really good don’t they!!!

There was one last decision to be made……

I have asked two different groups and gotten completely different answers….

What do you think??

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On Thursday, we talked about starting on my newest scrap quilt using 2.5-inch squares.

Now it is time to make the alternating blocks and see the magic happen!!

The alternating block is made up entirely of half-square triangles and frankly, I was shocked when I realized that I needed 256 of them. Even though I was dreading making them, I used my masking tape guide and they were quickly prepared.

To remind you, I put a piece of masking tape leading from my needle to the edge of the machine bed. Then I line up the corner of the square with the needle…..

….and sew along, keeping the other corner gliding along the edge of the tape…..

It was fast and easy and I was soon ready to start putting them together, starting with the center four patch….

I was really pleased that most of the points looked good!

I kept adding each section in turn…..

As I got to the end of the piecing, I realized that I hadn’t counted well and didn’t have enough bits to complete the last block.

At this point, there was an interesting interaction with myself that went something like this…..

Well heck, I have the triangles for that last block but not in the right arrangements, so I need to scavenge what I was already pieced to finish the block

Then I re-counted and realized that I had one too MANY blocks…..

Or did I?

Then I realized that one of the blocks I was counting was one I had taken from the previously pieced stack with the idea of using it as my guide.

So now I am back to being one block short

But wait, what is this one on the floor…was it on the stack and I dropped it after I counted.

Oh heck……just put them on the wall and see

And yes, I was one block short!

It was quite debilitating to have to piece 16 more half-square triangles to finish this last block!!

You may notice that, when I first laid it out, I had all of the red squares going in one direction….

Although I like that, I really wanted to add a lot more movement to it, so I started turning some of the squares so that the “red strips” twisted and turned.

THIS is so much better!!

Now I just have to get it sewn together and still in the same order…

BUT, I have come up with an idea of how to make that happen. Come back on Tuesday for the details!!

So far my “SUMMER OF THE SCRAP” has been a good one and the “Conquer Your Fabric Scraps Summit” was the star on top of the tree!! Thanks to everyone who joined and watched. I hope that you learned as much as I did!!

Since I have now finished using my 2-inch scraps, it is time to move to the 2.5-inch ones! And I can hear you all groaning and saying….”NO not another scrap quilt!!”.

This next quilt comes with a LONG history!!

I started it back in 2021 while on a guild retreat. Here is the original post…..

TOO… MANY… OPTIONS!!

I have worked on it over several retreats, but mostly it just sat in a box in my studio.

Time to remedy that!!!

When I pulled it out, this is where it stood…..

While that was a good start, there was a lot more left to do!!

I decided on a finished size, realizing that I needed to make 33 more blocks. Here are my notes after my return from the retreat back in May…..

…..with half being from each of these designs…..

I decided to make a start with the blocks containing the red squares, and it didn’t take too long to get those completed…..

Come back on Saturday and we will move on to the alternating squares!!

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