Quilt Rows and Borders Tips

Today is Whatcha Working On Wednesday at Leslie's blog, My Country Home.

Blocks, blocks, blocks.... they are everywhere!!!

Over the weekend, I finished the 72 blocks needed for "Early Autumn" and here they are arranged on the bed, aka, the design wall:



Every time I make a quilt, by the time I move them from the bed or floor to the sewing machine, ironing board and then back to the floor or bed, the rows gets turned around and/or upside down. This time I devised a method for keeping them straight.

I worked on sewing two rows of blocks together at the time, so I put one safety pin in the top of the middle block in the first row and two safety pins in the top of the middle block in the second row. This way I always knew which was the top and which order they were to be sewn in. After I sewed all the individual blocks together in a row and then sewed the two rows together, I would go get the next two rows, marking them with more safety pins.

If you look closely, you can see the safety pins in these blocks.



Blocks pinned and ready to be sewn together:





My plan for the week was to work on sewing the borders on the quilt top every night after work and I've been able to sew the first inner 1 inch black border on and three sides of the second inner 3 inch brown border. I hope to sew the remaining brown border on and then the outside pink 6 inch border before the end of the week.

Here is the quilt in the process of having a border pinned on.



I followed the directions in all my books for putting the borders on this quilt. You know, the part that says to measure the quilt through the middle, place a pin where the two edges and center are, cut the border a little longer that that size and then sew the border on the ends. If the border doesn't fit exactly, you are supposed to "ease" it on. This is supposed to prevent that wavy look you sometimes get with borders. So far, so good. Every time I see that part about easing the border on, I remember that song, "Ease on Down, ease on down, ease on down the Road" :o)

I even put a couple of rows of the quilt top on the table to see how it would look for a table runner. I'm not too sure I like this pattern for a table runner.



I REALLY hope be able to start free motion machine quilting this quilt this weekend, but we will see!