Quilt Progress

Don't you love a productive day.  I know I do!

After cutting out the picture panels on Friday night and getting the first borders around each block, I got stuck.

How was I going to make these individual blocks into a quilt top?  I had a variety of fabrics to use - that I had been collecting over a couple of years.  But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make sure the fabrics I used didn't take away from the pictures.

What do you do at this stage?  I look for people to ask, or if I can, show.  Several people suggested 2" squares joined together into blocks to fill the spaces, so I cut 2 1/2" strips ready to join, but I couldn't find a sequence I thought was right.  More time thinking.....

When my daughter came around, she was put in front of the quilt pieces, with the fabric choices that I had.  Her preference was to keep all the borders darker, so that the pictures stood out more.  Now all I had to do was hope that I had enough of the fabric to finish the job....  That's the problem with buying the fabric over the years and not today.

The next thing to organise was the backing and batting.

I found some fabric that would be suitable for the backing.

In my stash there is plenty of cotton batting, but maybe I should try the iron-on batting, in the hope that I can machine quilt.

So we went for a quick (who was I kidding - me quick in Craft Depot) trip to get the iron-on batting.

When we got back, we had new backing fabric, 6 other lots of fabric (1 metre or 1/2 metres) that perfectly suited other projects in my mind and a reel of cotton.  Where is the batting - I decided that I would use what I had at home (does this sound familiar or am I the only one that does this?) 

So today, I have had a very productive day and have now made the top of my quilt ......

The small bears were a border to one of the picture fabrics.  I have used them to break up the big blank sections at the top and bottom.

Yay!!!! 

Next week I'll add the batting and backing.  Wish me luck... I always find this stressful.