Between the month of January & February, I was frantically running around trying to finish the very last Round Robin quilt I did for my #twilter group A.
At the time of this writing, I still have not received my own round robin back, but I hear it’s coming, delayed by fabric selection.
Anyway, I had looked at an idea on Pinterest while searching for something else, and this border idea kept sticking to me as a great way to finish off a quilt.
First, the picture of the end, then we’ll discuss the process.
The idea I had seen was a strip style quilt with white borders, an accent color, and then multicolor strips outside extending to the end.
I had punched this into EQ7 and no matter what I saw there, I just couldn’t decide that they were any better than the strip idea I had seen on pinterest.
This was the quilt as I had received it.
It was so lovely pinned to my design wall (it was heavy, needed pins to help keep it up there).
The whole quilt was so whimiscal & fun. It needed a whimsical & fun last border on it.
Anyway, I had been doing bargello quilting for a while, my Royal Red King’s Puzzle quilt is a bargello style, and so was another quilt I was working on (not shown yet), and so my mind was doing strips anyway.
Lucky me, the math worked out fantastically and I could make 12 inch blocks.
So I drew it up in my sketchbook, abandoning all these EQ7 variations I had done during Nov-Jan.
I can divide easy numbers easily, and I first was thinking I would do a plain inner border and maybe inset some applique swirls on it, which would have also have been really nice too.
But then I started laying out fabric for it, and I found I had a really nice light green that looked like a good compliment to Daisy’s white & green disappearing four patch round.
I was thinking the green was like the grass for the birds, Daisy’s round was like a white picket fence, and then I decided to do a pathway & some sky, using the pathway as the contrasting color.
The pathway & the blue sky border are actually pieces I purchased for Laura’s neutral round robin that didn’t exactly “go” with her quilt, but were close. Well the pathway I bought & the light blue/grey that I used that I bought were for her quilt, and then I tacked on the bright blue butterflies to the order for ME, but they looked really good next to the blues in the birdhouse round. So decisions I thought I was making wrong earlier, ended up being good decisions now.
And then I decided to change the green fabric. Why? Because the green fabric I originally picked (not shown) was a lower quality. I could tell. It would have worked well for me, but not for a friend. It was perfect though in shade & lightness. So I had to substitute.
Which lead me to the lightest seafoam green fabric I have in the quilt.
But the fabric was “too plain” by itself. It was a good shade of green, the closest to what I was searching for, but it was too plain by itself.
But then I also saw the next lightest green at the fabric shop that mirrored Daisy’s fabric just exceptionally, even though it was darker than I wanted. I decided to do both in the quilt and then just layer them next to each other.
THEN I had the even darker batik sitting next to my computer. And as the week went on, it kept taunting me, telling me to gradate the greens into 3 levels of dark.
Which I did! And I love it.
And as you can see from the picture above, I had a fairly easy time of making the blocks once they were figured out. Each half was only 7 strips of varying widths.
Strips of green & strips of blue & brown. The blue & brown I made easy and made a base unit, then tacked on the extra blue to the base unit for the different lengths of the strips.
The greens I had less of a defined base unit, but that was ok.
Bargellos are a lot of work, don’t get me wrong, but there is an ease to them. You sew the strips into sets (base units) and then cut up those sets to the widths you need.
The hard part is going back to the ironing board for all these seams.
And here I could see it was going to work!
The corners were actually the trickiest part, trying to decide the order I would quilt them in. Part of it is like a log cabin block, and part is strips.
I snuck in the focus fabric into the little part of the border in addition to some of my pretty pink fabric as a nice compliment.
My only regret is not bringing in some of the cream into the quilt. I love it, but I think cream sitting right next to the pathway fabric would have eased some of the green we see here.
I calculated about 2000 pieces in total for the entire round of the quilt. Not to brag, again, bargello easily lends itself to having lots of pieces with less individual sewing sections in it.
That did lead me a few thoughts about my quilting insecurities. 1) Did I go overboard? 2000 is a lot of pieces. 2) Did my sections of the quilt overshadow the other sections of the quilt. 3) Did I try to show off?
I had the realization that not only did I do my best job for a quilt for a friend, but I did a style of quilt that was pleasing to me in a style that I was comfortable doing, something that I was familiar with, and also shows my style enough for others to know just by looking at it that border was mine. I did my best to match the other’s sections, and perhaps there is a little bit of overboardness, but even though it took a lot of 2 full days of 2 full weekends, it meant a lot to me to make something that I am proud of that can go to my friend Diane, who had to put up with all my insecurities with the Round Robins along the way.
And with that, I am done with my section of the Round Robin quilts. Once I receive mine, I will see what pictures are in the flickr group and put together a roundup for the round robin in its own post. I hear mine is outstanding, I can’t wait to see it.
