Drift Away {Bordered}

At the same time that I worked on my Breezy Blooms quilt, I added the black sashing strips to the top of my Drift Away quilt. The suggestion to add a skinny black sashing before adding a print border was given by quite a few of you and you were definitely right!

And then it sat, because I just wasn't sure what to use for the final border. I finally got the border fabric at the beginning of October. (Only, like, two months later. You can tell it's been a long time since I worked on this project because I was watching baseball in the photo above!)

The blue fabric on the right is what I picked up for the border, the other fabric is for my Double Delight quilt. When I did the math originally, I thought that I could squeak by with just a yard, but when it came time to make the decision at the cutting counter, I ended up getting a yard and a quarter.

And a good thing I did! Instead of cutting width of fabric strips, I decided that it would be better to cut length of fabric strips. With 45" long strips, I only needed two strips per side -- had I cut width of fabric strips, my two final sides would have been *just* too long and would have needed an additional seam and chunk of fabric. I am ALL about eliminating unnecessary seams, ladies and gents -- this is one of those occasions where it pays to take the extra time to do the math and plan ahead of time!

Here's the finished quilt top! My schedule and the weather has been uncooperative for outdoor pictures.

I am very happy I went with a more blue fabric to highlight the darker blues mixed into the quilt, which is mainly aquas.

(I'm also sort of happy that the leftover border fabric is the exact right shade for my planned color scheme for this year's Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, Good Fortune. That's a post for another day, though!)

My parents were in town visiting this weekend, so I decided to send this quilt, along with my now-completed Border Quilt top, back with them to be long arm quilted or quilted on my mom's mid-arm, if she feels so inclined. This quilt will end up with a teal dot extra wide backing and the Border quilt top will be backed with its tan-gold counterpart.

As a reminder, the pattern for Drift Away is by Melissa Corry of Happy Quilting. I followed her directions to make the 80" quilt and then added 1.5" black strips for the inner border and 4.5" blue strips for the outer border. My finished quilt will be 90" square which is a good queen sized bed quilt.

Happy Tuesday! Sharing at Linky Tuesday and Let's Bee Social!

Yesterday was also the first day of the semi-annual Tips and Tutorials Festival! Honey, Bunny, and Doll is one of the sponsors and I have also linked up three of my own tutorials:
Chit Chat Placemats
Easy Rail Fence Tablerunner
Fancy Flying Geese Units