Borders on a Blustery Day!

My borders are done!

And I am so happy with them!

I wish I could share with you the whole project, but I need to wait a bit longer. 

I CAN however, share with you how I did my borders –they look great on almost ANY quilt.

The center of this quilt is fairly busy, so to tone it down a bit, I chose one color family, blues, for my piano keys instead of using a myriad of multi colored strips which would have kept the busy going on and going on.

If you want a riot of color, go for it!  if you want to tone it down…pick one color family.  It gives two different looks, and I like both depending on which quilt these are going on.

My strips for this border are 1.5”.  These are not all width of fabric strips, or even length of fat quarter strips….they are anything and everything that was cleared out of bins.  The rule was, I had to at least get a 5” subcut from any strip.  And I sewed them into pairs yesterday.

I set up on the folding table HERE today!

It’s too cold and windy for treadling outside today, and I needed to be a bit speedier about this if I was going to get it done before Easter is over, so I set up the 301 where I could also watch some Netflix while stitching.

Trimming my widths!

With odd lengths of strips there is going to be some overage.  I decided to embrace the excess and have plans for turning the trimmings that were wide enough into 16 patch blocks for another project-to-be.  You an see here I have an untrimmed pile on the left, a pile of narrow sub-cuts from the ends , and finally a pile of border sections ready to sew into eights, into sixteens, etc.

I like to cut them to width at 4 strips per strip set for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost -- the ease of mixing and matching for utmost variety so there are few repeats all the same.  It's also very easy to trim up 4 connected strips at this point..it gets harder once you get to 8 or 16.

4 strips in a strip set before trimming is plenty enough for me and keeps it from getting unwieldy.

Keeping that piecing continuous!

Attaching borders to my quilt!

Hooray!

I love this half-log-cabin looking corner.

Piano key borders are STRETCHY.  So handle them carefully.  I am really happy how this turned the corner just right!

Yes there is Y2K Millennium fabric in there!

Two pieces, in fact!

Can you see that I am stay-stitching close to the edge?  I am less than 1/4” away from the edge.  I set my stitch length fairly large and sew all the way around the quilt to help secure the ends of the piano keys so seams don’t pop open in the quilting process.  This also helps keep the edges of the border from waving and stretching.

See the stitching around the edge??  Try it!

My top is COMPLETE!  And you’ll have to wait a bit to see it, but it’s going to be fabulous – just wait and see!

I needed to break from the sewing by late this afternoon when the last stitch was sewn.  We headed to Wilkesboro on a pilgrimage to Lowes:

New Front Porch furniture!

I had wanted this table last year, but they sold out before I could make my purchase.  This year we got it early ---it’s going to be really nice sitting on the deck with my tea and laptop enjoying the early mornings come summer!

Tonight ---NO SEWING.  I’m bushed.  I think it will be fairly early to bed.

Have a wonderful Easter, everyone!

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