Borders

I finally got around to sewing piano key sections together. No matter what I tell myself, or anyone else, about random being RANDOM; I always end up agonizing over sections that don't look right to me. I even fuss around using my seam ripper and "improving" an offending area. I spent a lot more time working on the two side orders than I needed to. Working with scraps is not necessarily mindless. However I did get them together and layered up and quilted. I need to pin a note up reminding myself that I have never been unhappy about the piano keys once the quilt has been finished.

This border is 82 inches long and this is about half of it. I am still thinking about adding another row of wavy quilting between the 2 rows that I've done so far. If I had quilted in the ditch over all the vertical seams or even quilted feathers I think the stitching would have been too dense for the body of the quilt. I am not gong to rip out the quilting but I am thinking about whether I might add something.


I need to trim the backing and batting and that is a process that requires Trimming away the batting and backing edges different widths and there is a lot of fussing around. I know think I can eliminate at least one step. I am going slow and rethinking my process.

In the meantime these top and bottom borders are still in sections up on my wall. One of the narrow green borders is between them so I can work on both of them at the same time.  I will be putting 7 inch blocks on both ends so the piano keys are able to fit across the wall.  I can agonize over them every time I look in that direction.











Maybe I need to pin up that note reminding me to think about the PK borders on the finished quilts.

2020 A New Year

Here we are in a new year and I am already behind.  I hope it will be a good year and I am giving it my best shot at trying to be optimistic.

After my last post I gave up trying to get in any any sewing or quilting time and folded up my sewing table and put my machine away. When new window were installed in our apartment we had to move a lot of things away from the windows. With my sewing room being a crowded space, putting things away made sense. I spent a lot of November  going over (and over and over) our health care policies and deciding on changes we might want to make. Jack used to take care of all of this; his vision problems have progressed to the point where he had to make his computer screen so large that it took him a very long time to do anything and he kept getting timed out. We also spent a lot of time on Jack's doctor visits and and tests. There will be more of those coming up.

There were good times too! Thanksgiving and Christmas and were special times as well as impromptu family visits. I had a milestone birthday, 85 and my family had a birthday party for me.
They had the party at our church and invited my Bible study group and the ladies in the church quilt group also. They gathered quilts and small items that I had made over the years and given away. They hung them all around the room. It was like a one woman show.

 I thought it was going to be just family and wondered why they couldn't all just come to our home.
It was the most fuss over my birthday in my whole life. I really never felt deprived of a birthday fuss; so close to Christmas the focus was just naturally on Christmas. One thing we always did was put up our Christmas tree on my birthday  and that was special enough.

While I never missed a big birthday fuss, I loved this one.

Here is a 4 generation of all my family who were able to come. 

So..... 2020 is here and my sewing room is back to normal and I am almost ready to sew and finish the Framed 9 patch.  I had it all packed away in an organized way but it still took me some time to  get the piano key border parts back in order on my design wall. They are not all sewn together but in sections of several strips.

These are sections of the 2 side borders with the green narrow inner border strips above one of the border sections. 

The side borders will be 81 inches long and are ready to sew together, pretty much in the this order. The top 2 rows, with the green inner border strips above, are one and the bottom 2 are the other.  My design wall is not wide enough to stretch the whole border across the wall.  I will layer them up and quilt them and join them to the sides of the right and left quilt sections. More to come about the process of joining the sections and adding the top and bottom borders later.

I wish everyone a happy and healthy New year with time to sew and time to post and time to enjoy with those you love. May the new year be filled with many blessings.