When I left you on Thursday, I was having lunch, thinking about why I didn’t like the current version of my quilt…..

Then it hit me…..

The red border just trails into nowhere!! It needed to make a full box, something like this…..

I also auditioned it with a cut-out like I had at the bottom….

….but I didn’t like it!! Whew….that makes it a little easier!!

But, to do what I wanted, I had to do a LOT MORE MATH, giving myself room for the lettering to fit without being squished AND room for the 1.625-inch (3-part) border.

Let’s just say that there were a lot of measurements taken and a lot of pencil marks drawn before I felt comfortable with my calculations…..

Before I could start sewing, I had to rip out some of the grey border…..

I momentarily thought about cutting the grey off but, fortunately, realized that I would have an unwanted seam there if I did that!!

Fairly quickly, I had the borders added with the top measuring about 23-inches square…..

I spaced out the letters and fused them in place…..

….and the top was ready to quilt…..

I headed to the garage and basted it together using 505 Spray…..

I was a bit concerned with the weight of the medals causing issues, so I used a double batting…..cotton on the back and wool on the top. I am thinking that the puffiness of the wool will help fill out the uniform. It looks kind of flat right now!!

I was so intent on the quilting that I forgot to take photos or video, but suffice it to say that I spent a lot of time changing thread colors, forcing my needle through 7+ layers of fabric and batting and generally praying that I didn’t mess it up!!

Then it was time to trim it down to the final size….20-1/2-inches (giving me 1/4-inch on each side to add the facing.

But now the wool batting was causing issues!! Because of the puffiness, the top had shifted some and this red corner wasn’t square….

I had started going thru scenarios where I took out the quilting in that corner and re-pieced the borders when I thought….

WHAT happens if I flatten out the top REALLY well using Magic Sizing???

And look, now that corner is magically square again…..

WHEW!!!

Again, after an extraordinary number of measurements, I made the final cuts….

I wanted to face the quilt using the grey fabric but all I had were a bunch of smallish pieces, so I sewed them together and hoped to have enough…..

To avoid bulk, I chose to open my seams and also didn’t fold the binding in half. I am hoping that just having one layer of fabric in the seam allowance will make it easier to turn to the back!!

Here it is turned and ready to be hand-sewn in place…..

….and YES….it measures EXACTLY 20-inches!!

Come back tomorrow and we will get it finished up and ready to enter.

Oh….maybe I should add a Poppy…..since that IS the name of the challenge!!

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Yesterday I titled my post “Remembering with Cherrywood”. Today’s post might be called “Cursing With Cherrywood” because…..

Now it was time to do the math!

I am a CPA by trade and I love Math, but not when a single wrong cut would ruin everything and there isn’t fabric to start over!!

Measuring showed me that the uniform took up 16.75-inches…..

….leaving 3.25 inches to play with and that 3.25 had to be divided by two…..so 1.625-inch borders were required.

AND, those 1.625-inch borders were divided into THREE strips!!

YIKES Frances….can’t you make anything easy!!!

I knew that I was going to want a little leeway in the final border so finally came to the conclusion that the first grey border and the red border would be 1/2-inch and the final grey border would be approximately 3/4-inch…..or however wide it needed to be to fit the 20-inch parameter.

Now, there was no way I was going to cut strips that would piece to 1/2-inch, so I decided to make them larger and then cut them down once they were applied!!

GOOD PLAN!!

The first border looked okay…..

Let’s add the top border. This one was going to be much wider and was greatly complicated by all of the bulk of lapels, shirts, epaulets, etc!!

I measured, re-measured,and measured again and then stabilized my ruler….said a little prayer….and made the cut…..

The top fabric was added and we were cookin-with-gas!!

If you noticed, when I was auditioning the red strip, I didn’t have enough fabric for it to meet in the center of the bottom….

I decided that I kind of liked that break, so I pieced it in…..

Now that I was happy with the red border, it was time to trim it down…..NOT TO 1/2-inch but to 3/4-inch…..

YESSSS…. I almost made that mistake!!

I added the last grey border, replaced the letters and stepped back to admire my handiwork……

But something didn’t look right!!

So what did I do……fixed lunch, sat on the deck and read for an hour and thought about it!!

Come back Saturday for the solution…..

Meanwhile, don’t miss tomorrows finish of Quilted Mandala #5. It is a favorite!!

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For Free-Motion Quilting ideas, be sure to check out my YouTube channel…… https://www.youtube.com/c/francesquilts/videos

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When I left you on Sunday, I was well on my way with creating the uniform.

When I started the next morning, it was time to attach some of the 3-D pieces, starting with the lapels. This was a bit fraught with anxiety as I kept forgetting exactly WHAT had to be in place before I sewed, meaning that there was quite a bit of un-sewing going on….ARGH!!!!

But at last, the lapels, pockets, pocket flaps, and sleeves were all attached together…..

I decided that the background behind the uniform would be light grey, so added those two pieces as well……

One of the most stressful things about the Cherrywood Challenge is that they MUST be 20-inches square!! Now I had to decided exactly how wide the uniform would be and then trim it to a square…..

Next it was time to talk borders! I felt that the grey would be perfect and quickly sewed three sides on, pinning the top…..

….but it was just BORING and BLAND.

Not a combination that you ever want to have!!

I was fairly sure that I would have to remove the borders that I had already sewn, but before I did that, I put the piece on my design wall and spent some time just looking at it while I sipped my cup of tea……

I decided that I really like the grey, but there was just too much of it. What would happen if I added a strip of color in the middle of the border…. maybe something a similar color to the Good Conduct Medal……

OKAY….I am starting to like it better!

But first I had to decide what I was going to do with the top border.

I spent time at my computer, auditioning different sizes and types of fonts and came up with one that I liked…..

I pulled out my bag of “Wonder Under Bits” (you do have one of those don’t you?)….

….and prepared the letters for fusing…..

But, what was I going to fuse them to??

There were two red fabrics that I was interested in, so I cut three 2×3″ squares out of each fabric and auditioned them…..

It was DEFINITELY the darker red on the right!!

Before I could officially fuse them, I needed to sew all of the borders in place.

You may notice in the above photo, I have fixed the red inset border to go all the way to the top.

After making copious measurements, I came to the conclusion that the horizontal area needed to be a bit smaller. Instead of ripping off all of those borders (thankfully I had made them WAY too wide), I close to make another seam 1/4-inch inside the first one…..

….and trimming off the excess…..

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Come back tomorrow for the harrowing journey of adding borders so that the quilt is EXACTLY 20-inches!!!

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One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.

You can find out more at this link…..