The Border Quilt {Finished Quilt}

In November, I sent off my Border Quilt top with my mom for her to quilt. My intention was always for this to be a gift for my mother-in-law (as these colors are right up her alley!) and having my mom quilt it was really the only way it was going to get done for Christmas.

For the backing, we picked out this gold dot extra wide print. My mom tells me that the bolt says that it is "tan" but it is most certainly a gold toned fabric. Getting the first shot of a quilt on my mom's frame is always exciting!

She quilted a simple stipple all over the quilt. She also was wonderful and volunteered to bind the quilt for me -- she found the perfect blue print in her stash to go with the blues in the quilt.

My mother-in-law was VERY surprised when my parents arrived on Christmas Day and they came with more presents for her! She was beyond thrilled that she has another quilt from me. (This is the third quilt I have given to her, in addition to a tree skirt.)

She said that this will be the perfect quilt for her couch for the "in-between" seasons -- when it is neither baseball season nor the Christmas season.

Many thanks to my husband, who has reached professional status with his quilt holding abilities.

Quilt Stats:
Name: Dianne's Border Quilt
Pattern: The Border Quilt by Patterns by Jen (top was made as part of Jen's QAL!)
Fabrics: Kona Champange for spacer strips, scraps for piecing
Quilting: Meander in off-white by my mom
Size: Approximately 65" x 72"
Started: July 2018
Finished: December 2018

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!

The Border Quilt QAL {Friendship Stars}

It's a slightly delayed installment of the Border Quilt QAL! If you haven't joined in yet, there's still plenty of time -- check out all of the information on Patterns By Jen.

The last trip around the quilt added sawtooth stars, and this round adds friendship stars! This will be my last round of blocks for my version of the quilt.

After adding the spacer borders, I set to work on the friendship stars. As when I made my sawtooth stars, I separated my scraps into light and dark piles. I had a little marathon cutting session and cut the block parts for all 42 friendship stars. I pinned the parts for each block together to make it easy for me to work on a block or two at a time when I had a few extra minutes.

All of the block parts stacked up is nearly 8" tall! I even had to add in extra fabric -- I had to add in a light green print as an extra "light" fabric because I had used up so much of the light fabrics I had originally pulled for this project. I've been pretty busy outside the sewing room, so these have been very slow going.

However, my pre-cut blocks have made it very easy to pick up a set of block parts and work on one block at a time. Last week, the majority of my sewing time was the few minutes I had between getting home from work, starting dinner, and my husband getting home from work. Saturday I finished up the blocks and started laying out the blocks.

I ended up with a lot more blue stars than I had anticipated! I did my best to both mix up the block colors and block background colors so the same colors weren't too close to one another, while also making it look mostly random. This is a hard task! It was much easier to arrange the sawtooth star blocks because there were half as many!

My quilt top is now finished -- hooray! (Even if I had to move furniture and turn on every lamp in my living room this morning before work to take this picture!)

There are a couple stars with different centers from their star points -- this again was a "make it work" decision to stretch my fabric. I thought I would only have enough fabric to make the sawtooth stars and I ended up with enough to make the complete round of friendship stars with the help of one extra background fabric. I thought this was going to be a wall hanging (a large wall hanging!) but now it is most certainly throw sized. I'm not planning on adding any more to this quilt, but I could always change my mind!

Happy Tuesday! Sharing at Linky Tuesday and Let's Bee Social! And Needle and Thread Thursday too!

The Border Quilt QAL {Sawtooth Stars}

My quilt is growing at a rapid pace! Check out the information about The Border Quilt QAL here!

This "round" of blocks is sawtooth stars! Here's my quilt with all of the stars added:

Since I'm working from scraps and not from yardage, I thought I would share a little more in detail about the process I use to make scrappy yet coordinated blocks for this section of the quilt.

First and foremost, I separated my scraps into one pile of lights and light-mediums and a second pile of darks and dark-mediums for my backgrounds and stars, respectively. From these piles, I sorted the fabrics by size to make sure I had enough of a fabric to make a full block (or two or three or four!). Most of my blocks were made in pairs and all of the blocks but the red star blocks in the corners have the same fabric throughout the block. 

I also employed multiple techniques to make the flying geese based on the sizes of my scraps. For many, I had fabric wide enough to use the fast flying geese technique. For others, my scraps weren't wide enough so I used the stitch and flip technique. Even though the stitch and flip technique isn't my favorite, it allowed me to make use of a wider variety of scraps. 

Originally, my plan was to quit after my "round" of stars, but I have plenty (PLENTY!) of scraps for the next round of the quilt -- friendship stars! I still need to add my next round of solid fabric as the spacer border, but I will do that when I start my friendship stars next week. I think I only have enough Kona Champagne for one more spacer border!

Happy Wednesday!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday Let's Bee Social, And Oh Scrap!

The Border Quilt QAL {Checkerboard Rings}

I've managed to add on a few more rounds of rounds to my Border Quilt! Check out all about the quilt along on the Patterns by Jen blog!

For this section of the quilt, we added alternating checkerboard borders and background borders. You can see my first post about the quilt center here.

For my first checkerboard border, I decided to go with red and light green. The red dot is a fabric that I used for the binding of one of my Little Firecracker quilts and the green is left over from my Little Bunny Placemats and I also used it in my Magnolia mystery quilt.

For my second checkerboard, I went with my paisley print and dark green. Both of these fabrics are ones that have just been hanging around in my stash for a while.

The next round will be sawtooth stars! I'm hoping I have enough fabric to at least get through adding all of the sawtooth stars and then a final background border.

Check out some of the other versions of the quilt by some great bloggers!
Stephanie @ Quilt'n'Party
Daphne Greig
Becca @ Pretty Piney
Kate @ Seams Like A Dream
Vicki @ My Creative Corner

The Border Quilt QAL {Quilt Center}

After a momentary delay, the start of the Border Quilt QAL is here! If you haven't joined in yet, there is still plenty of time to do so -- check out all of the information on Jen's blog and see Jen's first post about her flannel version of the quilt here!

To refresh your memories, I'm making my quilt from scraps in more traditional colors with a Kona Champagne background. The paisley print in the bottom center is my "inspiration fabric" for this quilt. There are batiks, traditional prints, and more modern prints mixed in with this fabric pull.

This week we're starting the center of the quilt and I chose to do the pieced version of the center since I'm working with scraps rather than yardage.

I was very strategic about getting my pieced unit squared up and I didn't have any tragedies! Here's the center with the solid border:

Now back to the grind until it's time for week 2! The rain here in Maryland is preventing me from getting good pictures of some things that are finished/nearly finished, so here's hoping that Florence changes course and just goes back out to sea.

Check out some of the other bloggers sewing along!
Quilt 'n' Party
Vicki Holloway Quilting
Lizard Creek Quilting
Daphne Greig
Quilt District

Sharing at Oh Scrap!

The Border Quilt QAL {Join me!}

I'm excited to share that I am joining in on The Border Quilt QAL hosted by Patterns by Jen!

Jen is a fellow Island Batik Ambassador and designs beautiful patterns, including this one! She was lovely enough to sponsor a giveaway as part of our Blocked Rainbow QAL this spring and I jumped at the chance to play along with her Border Quilt QAL, which starts in September!

Click this link to see a full schedule for this QAL!

The fun part about this quilt pattern is that it is written so that you can make your quilt as small or as large as you'd like!

For me, I'm going to be making a scrappy version of the quilt. I pulled an older fat quarter (the paisley print) from my stash and pulled other fabric from my scrap bins to coordinate. My background fabric is Kona Champagne.

My plan is to make the quilt as big as my scraps allow, which I am estimating will carry me through the sawtooth stars. I'm also planning to do the pieced center.

Looking at my current fabric pull, I might need to add in a few more dark pieces, but I'm sure if I dig deeper in my stash I'll find options.

Additionally, Jen will be having interviews with some of us bloggers that are participating in the QAL throughout the month of August. Keep your eyes peeled for those!

Come join me!