Thought I’d Finish… I Didn’t

I felt confident that I’d finish up my Brandon Mably Interweave quilt this evening, but I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t get a lot done.

I sewed all the rows in the top section together and got the borders sewn on.

I had thought I would do the side borders before I sewed the rows together but decided agains that. So I sewed the rows then laid out the border pieces, sewed the border pieces together, then sewed the border strips onto the sides and top of the quilt.

I made a few mistakes on the left side… that was the final side of that piece. I had to unpick a few seams and reorganize it all, then sew it again. Then I screwed it up again!

So by the time I was done with that top piece, I sort of gave up on finishing the borders on the bottom piece. But I didn’t feel like I was done.

So I took the top piece off my design wall and laid it out on my guest room bed to get it out of the way.

I did get the borders on one side of the bottoms section done during my lunch break today.

I was going to move the bottom piece higher on my design wall so it would be easier to lay out the border pieces when I remembered… I can just roll up my design wall!

It’s so much easier to lay those borders out when they’re at a reasonable level.

Note: I’ve had quite a few people asking me about my design wall recently. You can find a blog post where I write about it here. I wish I was able to refer people to the seller but I’m pretty sure he’s not making these any more.

I’m positive I’ll finish up this quilt tomorrow night. Positive.

I have a good deal of fabric left over from this quilt. it’s probably enough to make another quilt, depending on what I combined it with. I’m thinking maybe an all Brandon Blue Swirly quilt as a palate cleanser. These are all third yard pieces with one 7 inch square cut out.

I had an inspiration today for a way to use up these scrappy blocks that I made about a year ago. You can see them and get more info in this blog post.

I had originally planned to arrange them into a color wash piece but I sort of lost interest in it. Arranging blocks on my design wall is not my favorite part of the process. And these blocks have been sitting in a drawer in the closet of my sewing room for a year… untouched and unloved.

@Tilkunviilaaja on Instagram is combining these little scrappy blocks with wonky varying shades of gray backgrounds and then arranging them into a quilt top. I like what she’s doing and it would be a quick way to make these blocks into something more substantial.

I’m pretty sure I have in the neighborhood of 160 blocks.

I’m thinking maybe using different values of one color of batiks to border these. Maybe yellows. Maybe indigos. Maybe use up some of my scrap KFC 2.5 inch strips to border them. I have a few ideas and will give it a few days to develop.

That might be a perfect palate cleanser. Bordering those blocks would go quickly and I could be onto something else in no time. I could also make them into economy blocks (square within a square). That actually might be really fun!!! Hmmm.

Here are the exciting photos of my boys from this evening.

Rico has now retreated back behind the end table and rocking chair.

I’m plaing pickleball first thing the morning and it looks like the weather will cooperate. Maybe even sun, but likely quilt cool. It will be good to be outside and invigorated.