Finished top

About 9:00pm last night I finished attaching the last border!!

I couldn’t find a place large enough to pin it up so ended up laying it out in the downstairs foyer and photographing from the stairs…..

I am really pleased with the result and cant wait to get onto the quilting.

I am struggling a bit with the arrangement of my studio. It doesn’t seem to be as user friendly as I had hoped. Don’t know if it is just that I am not used to it yet or if I need to do some rearranging…..guess time will tell.

I do know that I need to clean up the table to the right of my machine. I don’t have as much room there now as I used to so think that some of the “stuff” may need to move to a shelf or maybe I need to build a small shelf to sit on the floor just under the table.

I did have one AHA moment when I thought about opening out the other side of the table which made it MUCH easier to pin on the borders….just wish that I had thought of about 5 borders ago!!!!

Ok, enough talking…..back to the studio to design the backing….

Border Mania

Yesterday my husband, Michael, left for a week in Scotland. Since I have worked hard to get the majority of my accounting work done and all of my Christmas presents purchased and mostly wrapped, I have given myself the gift of a week of quilting.

And the project is……Flower Pots!!……

As I posted several months ago, I had trouble deciding how to set the blocks together and, through trial and error, ended up with a series of borders in each block. First a 1/2 inch light green fabric that started out as the “pot” fabric but then changed to another fabric once I ran out.

Next came a 1 inch border in a dark fabric that offset the colors of the block.

Then the accent orange border which is 3/4 inch.

As I planned the large flower border, I ended up adding another set of borders prior to the flower border and had planned to put another set on the outside. That is where this tale continues.

As I started picking fabrics for the next 1 inch border, I really wanted the same fabric that had been used in the other 2 large framing borders, but unfortunately there was just barely enough fabric. I even pieced them together with a straight seam rather than a bias seam because I was afraid that I would run out……

And then as I measured, I was still a few inches short. SO, I dug thru my scrap basket and found this wonderful 13 inch piece…..

HOORAY, we were saved!!!

OK, that border was added and then the last 1/2 inch orange border (which, by the way, I only have about 6 inches of orange fabric left)……

Now came the fun task of figuring out what to do with the final border. I tried a light green……

….uh……NO!!!

Then a darker blue……

…..Still not right.

How about white…… _C176969

…..DEFINITELY NOT!!

How about the green that is already in the inner borders…..

Better…..but not quite there….

And then it hit me……I HAD to finish the pattern by encasing the orange strip in two dark border strips……

Yes it looks great, but that means that I have TWO more sets of borders to add!!!

Back to the studio I go!!! Now, don’t get the idea that I am really upset….I am so happy about getting to sew that I don’t mind HOW many borders I have to add.

Back to the Flower Pots

I had a bit of Studio time this past week and decided to pull out the Flower Pot blocks that my Mom had appliqued……

I had worked on them some before we left for our Turkey trip but just couldn’t figure out what to do next. I guess that I just needed some time away from it, because as soon as I looked at it this past week I KNEW what I was going to do…..at least the first step.

I first needed to cut the blocks down to 15-1/2 inches so pulled out my large square ruler (16-1/2 inches) and started making the cuts. After the first block I decided that I needed some guidelines so used masking tape to mark the center of the block and also just outside of the 15-1/2 inch cutting line…..

Now here is my masking tape trick…..you know how it will often stick to the surface and leave icky goo when you pull it of? Well, if you will first stick the tape to fabric, it will lose enough of the stickiness that there will not be any problem with removing it. I normally just stick it to my skirt or pants and then peel it off and stick it onto the ruler.

I decided to put a small (1/2 inch) border around each of the blocks and immediately sought out the fabric that the pots were made from……

I was very pleased with this move because it helps to unify all of the blocks!!

Next, I selected an arrangement for the blocks and hung them up on the design wall….. But where do I go now!!!!

After trying out tons of pieces of fabric, I was ready to pull out my hair. Then I noticed that I really liked the dark fabrics surrounding the blocks and also that the orange piece on the right seemed to work well with the other fabrics.

Then I got the idea to use a small strip of the orange as another break between the sashes…..

So I started adding borders and sashes and before long the center looked like this…..

But what now????

I tried adding white borders but they looked TOO white so I purchased two fabrics that were similar in colors to the pot fabric. I cut out wide borders and added them to two of the sides, planning to then add more flower appliques on top…..

IT WAS GHASTLY!!!!!

So, I went back to the white borders but started thinking about making them narrower and also thinking about how to make them fit with the rest of the quilt.

THEN IT HIT ME……

….add border pieces onto the edges of the applique border so that it matches the rest of the quilt.

Fortunately, I have plenty of orange but not nearly enough of the “pot fabric” so have used one of the original border fabrics instead.

Mom only wants the borders for the applique and does not really want to have to wrestle with the entire quilt top so I have basted the white border on and will now lay out my new appliques. Then I will take the border off and send it to her for the hand work to be done.

It is such fun when the quilt “tells” you what needs to happen next!!!