Rebecca Was Afraid of Borders. Now, She's Afraid of Basting

Borders Attached, And I'm Still Alive!

It's absolutely ridiculous, but it took me almost two weeks to get the borders on this baby quilt because I psyched myself out about my imperfect piecing and the dangers of borders coming out ripply or wavy or whatever if I didn't measure correctly or if my math was off or if didn't pin the borders properly or if I fit the borders to the quilt top rather than fitting the quilt top to the borders -- wait, or are you supposed to do it the other way around?  Can you imagine if this had been a complicated pieced border instead of plain old strips of solid fabric?  I'd have been in agony for at least a month.  Anyway, I sewed the last border strip on last night and IT IS JUST FINE and now I feel foolish for wasting so much time and energy worrying about them.  After all, I do have a seam ripper, right?  Didn't even need to use it.  This quilt would be finished already if I wasn't such a dork.

Next subject of stress and indecision is which of the three Minky cuddle fleece backing fabrics to use with this quilt.  Since it's for a baby gift, I think the black and white giraffe print is adorable, but this is a polyester fleece fabric after all, and I'm worried that there is too much white in the background that is going to turn dingy and gray almost immediately:


Giraffe Minky Cuddle Fleece, Backing Choice #1

See how cute they are now?  But the quilt top is predominantly black, a baby quilt gets washed a bazillion times, and the white polyester fleece is bound to get horribly dingy and gray very fast.  They won't be able to wash the quilt even in color safe bleach without fading the quilt top colors.  So I'm leaning toward the zebra print instead, which has far less white in it:

Zebra Minky Cuddle Fleece, Backing Choice #2

I do have my satin binding picked out already -- a royal blue that I found online here in a 25-yard roll. 

Satin Binding By the Yard

I've only used Wright's prepackaged 2" satin binding in the past, but since each package is only 4.75 yards I always had to do two joining seams with that stuff.

So, now it's time to layer and baste this bad boy so I can get it quilted -- or, I should say, now it's time to PROCRASTINATE layering and basting.  I hate layering and basting, and I need to clear off a suitable surface in my studio or bring in another table to do it properly.  Meanwhile, I'm headed off to my LQS in hopes that I can rectify the fabric shortage issues with my FrankenWhiggish Rose project.  I did not realize how much more fabric waste there is with applique than with pieced blocks!  I have been continuing to play with the design for that quilt in EQ7, by the way, and my current favorite looks something like this:

New and Improved FrankenWhiggish, 86" x 86"

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that every time I tweak the design it gets more complicated, and the quilt gets bigger.  At 86" x 86", it's kind of big for a throw quilt to live on my sofa, don't you think?  Anyway, if I don't get myself out the door and on the road, I won't make it to the fabric store at all today.

I'm linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.  Happy Stitching and Happy Monday!