Working on Anvil Blocks

I have been working on finishing up the Anvil blocks quilt top.

 I layered up pairs of  4 inch squares to make HST's for border blocks  and I spent a lot of time trimming them to 3 1/2 inches.


 Half the HST's had yellow on one side and half had orange/peach on one side. Then I auditioned strips of yellow print and strips of orange for 1 inch spacer borders
 I decided to go with the orange turned so the strips were vertical ( on the right) for the yellow strips I am using a more subtle  orange and yellow batik stripe also positioned vertical.

I am working on putting the HST's together in sets of 4 that will be stitched to the yellow or orange spacer strips and then attached to the blocks on the perimeter of the quilt top.
The yellow background blocks will get yellow  spacers and yellow HST's; the orange will get orange. The photos on the left show one corner block and 2 side blocks. the HST border echoes the placement of the HST's in the Anvil blocks.

When I make a pieced border I like to sew the border sections to the perimeter blocks rather than make  one long border piece and then attach it to the top or side of the quilt. I get better results with pieced borders doing it this way. I probably would not do it this way if my inner/spacer borders was not also pieced.

I should have had this all finished today. But I  cleaned up the  area a bit and gave a little quilting lesson to my grandson's girlfriend yesterday. This morning I had a short episode of vertigo; afterward I just rested around and watch TV for a while. Now I am back at work on the top but have considered a slight change in the layout. The orange background blocks alternate with the yellow background blocks in a checker board style.  I intend to stay with that pattern but I am thinking of turning  the last two rows 90 degrees for a barn raising set. I have already sewed  the center 2 blocks together in each row so I am trying to work out how I can accomplish this without taking out too many seams. I can't just flip them over without changing the blocks on either side or I will  lose the checkerboard. It is not a difficult thing to do but I want to get it right the first time and not have to do anything over (and maybe over again). I had worked out the layout in EQ and had discarded this idea but when I started sewing the blocks together I had second thoughts.

Second thoughts are the bane of my existence!