Discovering New Borders...

How often do you use fabric that has those long, vertical designs - leaves, vines, birds, flowers?? The kind of fabric you see in antique quilts, made sometime during the mid to late 1700's and usually found in strippy quilts?
Though I have long admired that style and even made a simple 9-patch strippy quilt a few years ago, buying yardage with multiple vertical designs has always kind of scared me...what would one do with it? How would you cut into it and make the designs work effectively and get the most use out of the yardage?

Return to last year with me for a just second...I posted a journal entry about the win-win of bartering  (click on Archives - Stash Envy, January 7, 2010) with a quilting friend....well, Chris and I are at it again! She just finished redoing her kitchen (maybe she would let me sneak a few pictures in sometime in the future!) and it just so happens that a certain wonderful yellow ware bowl didn't have any where to go in its new surroundings...it now holds a place of honor on my dining room table.

In return, I finished piecing this quilt top for Chris.It is a big quilt and I could not capture it all!

Back to those vertical designs I was scared about...Chris had 4 yards to work with - there were 4 usable rows of narrow repeating green vines which I could cut and insert between each of the 4 9 patch panels. One problem - not quite enough yardage - so ended up piecing one of the rows & because of the design, it is almost completely invisible. Next dilemma - not enough yardage to do all 4 borders identically...but having viewed antique quilts with sides and tops and bottoms different, I figured it might work with this project. But another dilemma presented itself...the design with the rosy-pink birds...
 

 was a different width than the large brown flowing vine. Where to cut?
 

 I ended up having to sacrifice some of the remaining narrow repeating green vine section, but it seems to have worked out okay. Then another dilemma - the larger brown flowing vine was not long enough to make a top and bottom border width wise. So I cut 4 square blocks for each corner from a pretty green print Chris had sent along. The top is now finished and will be returned for quilting.

As nervous as I was about making that first cut (and all cuts were done with sharp Ginghers - no rotary cutting here), I ended up really enjoying working with this fabric and will now be on the lookout for this type of print instead of passing by it in a quilt shop.

Let's see - what else has been happening in the sewing room - caught up on my Civil War Blocks that Barbara Brackman is featuring.

(Top left) Seven Sisters - those girls about put an end to me with all those points - ewww...not my forte!
(Top right) Texas Tears
(Bottom) Kansas Troubles

And - also finished up Block #5 of Beyond the Cherry Tree

A good week - accomplished some things & learned a lot about working with those vertical prints.
Wishing each of you good accomplishments too -

Always take time to stitch.

Pat