I have been continuing to work on the Australian Fabric quilt and “thought” that I had planned my border and was basically ready to finish it up…..NOT!!!
My plan was to put a narrow border around the center section and then add 10 inch blocks around the outside. These blocks were going to be curve pieced just as the smaller ones had been.
I spent a good deal of time going thru the leftover Aussie fabrics and looking for ones that would allow me to cut another large block…..12 inches to start with. Since many of the fabrics that I had were only fat quarters or half-yard cuts, I had to be very careful with the cutting process.
Since I wanted to use the Aboriginal designed fabrics for the binding, I decided to go ahead and make a long cut from each of the fabrics as well.
Additionally, I wanted to use up as much of the fabrics as I could so was planning to put any leftovers on the back of the quilt. I started cutting these pieces at the same time.
THEN…..
I started piecing the large border blocks, but they looked horrible…..
I felt that it just made everything look muddled!!
So, the first thing that I tried was to change the inner border to a brighter fabric and that helped some…..
….but not enough. So, I went downstairs to eat lunch and think about it a little.
As I thought, I started wondering if the problem wasn’t that there was too much movement in the blocks and that they were simply too big. I went back upstairs and started folding the big blocks down so that there was only one curve in each….
Now I was getting somewhere!!!
Since I didn’t have a lot of fabric left at this point, I knew that I was going to have to cut down these blocks so that I could use them as well.
It was a bit difficult to do, but I tried to get at least 7-1/2 inches out of each block.
On some I even went to the trouble of re-pressing the seam allowance to give me that extra 1/8th of an inch…..
In this block, the stripe was too large so I cut it down and re-pieced it to be smaller……
So, as of quitting time, it was looking much better and I am more encouraged about the border…..
I am thinking that I will place the blocks so that the stripe continues around the quilt, but will decide that once I have them all pieced
On an aside, I was really wanting to use the Indian fabric that had been bleeding in my last post, so I decided to see if I could wash it out. After THREE hot water rinsings, the water looked like this….
…..and after 15 or so rinsings, it looked like this……..
I am still conflicted about whether or not to use it for the inside border, but will get there and see…..