In contrast of the red and grey Dresden flower quilt, I was cleaning up the parts of the Forget Me Not stained glass quilt pattern, and I had a few ideas on how to do my borders on this quilt.
It was a nice change and I noticed the shift of tone, both literal and figurative, of working on such bright colors.
A few years ago I got a few green-blue-green fabrics that worked well with each other. I had done my “twisty quilt” from the challenge from my guild from 2 years prior, and these leftover solids were hanging out in my stash, but seemed to play nice with all the pretty fabrics of the forget me nots.
I started hijacking the initial fabrics provided by the quilt kit pattern that I bought initially, but still had a desire to use the fabrics somewhere in the border.
I also imagine the borders of stained glass windows to be made in smaller, manageable pieces like bricks.
And I have a very wild, colorful fabric that many people would automatically decide was perfect for a border fabric, but is usually not my preference. But I auditioned it next to the forget me not fabrics and was reasonably happy. As long as I continue on with the stained glass part of the quilt, which will frame the wild fabric well next to the prettiness of the applique of the forget me nots.
I didn’t take pictures of the quilt as I was designing it in stages, only at the end.
Actually these pieces are still all in the auditioning phase. None are cut out to the correct brick length or figured into the design of the end of the borders of the quilt completely. I do know my limited amounts of fabrics have kept the widths of each blue border bricks to these absolute widths.
Also I had some leftover bright solid yellow left from the same challenge quilt. Since yellow is such as strong color, I plan to use “mini bricks” in the rows of the borders to bring the yellow color outward from the middle of the quilt.
And then the large patterned obnoxious fabric I think will rest widely on the outside of the entire thing without doing any bricks on it.
But before it gets completed, I have the frontward-facing flower shrank down and copied, ready to add to the outside borders on top of all the bricks in at least 2 different colors.
And as of a couple of weekends ago, this was stitched down to the back.
I used the F stitch on my machine, a blind hem stitch, which meant I had to keep on the right side when sewing it down. I used Aurifil smoke colored monofilament on the front, and as you might be able to see, grey thread on the back.
Try as I might, it’s going to be near impossible for you to see the monofilament on the front.
But this project, even though the color, the brightness, the hope did it’s job to pull me from an area of darkness, my focus had to switch back to other things, and put this one aside for the end of the year this year or beginning of next year.
First to do some handwork type projects to not bring my sewing machine to a small sewing day, and then to have something to do offline when out of town, and then onto the guild quilt that I am in charge of making, as it is the one with deadlines and other people involved.
I do have to say, that it was really striking to have both this quilt displayed right next to the grey Dresden quilt on my design wall. It really showed the “tale of two cities (quilts)” vibe here of best of times, worst of times. It was kinda nice to see the interplay of both those types of feelings together. The spring, the color, the designing, the bright yellow pops, the curves, the possibilities!
Scientific Quilter 