Claire: Very pretty!

nice finish Claire!
I'll be sending mine out to be quilted too, backed with one of the other finished mystery tops in the pile.
I only quilt my own when they are 40" or less. I Really don't enjoy machine quilting and I so seldom buy fabric I consider that non-expense goes toward my quilting ;)

In the 'if I had it to do over' I'd have switched the pink out to orange or green, this is a pretty pink and blue quilt in 30's.

Time for a coffee break/progress report. I am putting together the rows, still on track. This part is always so fun. I got a little confused at my Tuesday group pinning when I came to the sashing cornerstones that were basically just hanging in the air, but I did indeed pin them correctly. Goal is to get it ready for the border today, border tomorrow.

With my small work/layout space and since I had enough fabric in my "cut large and trim down", once everything was committed to and the setting triangles were in place, I trimmed them down after they were connection correctly to their square. I'm just not going to be able to do a good job if I wait until it's all put together. I was able to cut at .5" lining up along the squares in the 4-patches. Then I stabilized them at 1/4" which is the actual seam allowance. Just let the machine take it in easy and gentle along those bias edges while they are small and not a lot of tension on them. I might leave this as a half inch seam allowance on both sides, more decisions to make when I put on the inner border.

Such beautiful progress photos, everyone! I am only halfway through my main blocks, but they're getting easier and faster to put together. I am also out of the fabric combinations I just didn't love and into the ones I like much better, so piecing the blocks together is a joy instead of a chore. So is giving myself the freedom from making all of my points line up perfectly. I'm still a beginner and flying geese were a new unit for me. I will rip and redo a seam once...but it stays the way it is after that point.

It seems like with every project right close to the end I figure out something that would have made the whole process easier if I had known it from the beginning. This time it is how to get my consistent scant quarter seam without a quarter-inch foot or a bulky fabric guide. Now that I have it, I can sew faster and my machine doesn't catch and distort seams or chew on nearly as many triangle points as it did.

As for quilting? I am tempted to send it to a longarmer so I don't have to look at it anymore, but I really enjoy actually quilting. I am considering echoing the nine-patch grid of these blocks with my walking foot and diagonal straight lines, but I think something curvy would work too. Baptist Fans or freeform spirals....or pebbling! The latter two would mean FMQ though, and I have never FMQ anything bigger than a pot holder :D

Well...the borders are all pieced, the inner border is on, the pinwheels ill go on tomorrow. Then I will need to decide if I want one more border, maybe deep blue, for the eye to rest on the edge. See what it looks like. The binding will be green with a white flange.

I am finishing the second comfort quilt that interrupted my mystery. I have the second one layered and pinned and I'll quilt it tomorrow. Hopefully by Saturday I can get back to the mystery. I am going to play with the border HSTs and see if I can come up with anything I like. Otherwise I will add a single fabric border and binding to match. If I don't go fancy, I'll go very plain. lol

I am loving all the quilts but I think so far Kalamaquilts' is my favorite. Love those repro fabrics. That was a surprise to me for as a rule, I am not drawn to them.
I posted the top of this comfort quilt in Pictures. I am so pleased with how it came out. I drew it up on graph paper and it looks almost exactly like my sketch.

One of the things I’m thinking about for border is that pile of pink and white sashing I won’t be using, stacking them. I’d need a lot more but that is easy Peasy work, I’ll also have a ton of blue and white 1/2 square triangles I can incorporate.i love making quilts!

Working on borders--I'm doing a zigzag rather than sawtooth. Fighting a virus (again), so I'm not moving forward too quickly.

I have all my rows done. Today I hope to sew them all together. Yippee!

I have one more block to put together on the En Provence that pushed my Frolic to the sidelines, then on to borders. I think fear of quilting it is the reason I delayed finishing this top for so long. But the idea is somewhat less daunting since I decided these somber colors look better as a 3x3 block quilt than as a 4x4.