The Joy of Mitered Stripe Borders, With a Little Help From Donna Lynn Thomas

My Jingle BOM project is starting to come together, FINALLY!  I dragged the cutting and seaming of these striped borders for weeks, and then procrastinated actually attaching them to the center applique medallion of this quilt because I had to be in the right frame of mind for it.  Actually, I just had to be fully awake and "sharp" for it, because I didn't have any more of the border fabrics I was using and I did NOT want to spend hours carefully cutting those stripes in single layer..  No math errors, and no cutting errors!  It wasn't brain surgery, but it wasn't "mindless sewing," either.  I'm glad I waited until I was awake, fully caffeinated, and had plenty of time so I wouldn't be rushing.  

Inner Borders Attached and Mitered!  Woo Hoo!

I think this is only the second time I've mitered corners on a border before, and I've never done it before where I was matching stripes at the miter.  I referred to one of my favorite reference books by Donna Lynn Thomas, Quiltmaking Essentials 2: Settings and Borders, Backings and Bindings, and just followed Donna's clear instructions step by step, and those borders came out pretty near perfect!

I have Donna's companion book to this one, too (Quiltmaking Essentials 1: Cutting and Piecing Skills) and I recommend that one, too.  What I like about these two books is that they are thin, quick reads initially, but packed full of useful information at a very low price point.  There are no projects in either book, but these two books are like the instruction manual that tell you everything you need to know for any pattern you got from a magazine or dreamed up in your head.  The information on how and why to create a pressing plan in the first book goes way beyond the old adage of "press to the dark side" and made a huge difference for me between perfect points and points blunted or chopped at the seam -- who knew?  But I digress.

It Fits!

After all of that waffling back and forth, hemming and hawing, I really do like these borders.  The green herringbone was a random quarter yard piece in my stash that I don't remember ever buying, and all of that careful cutting along the border stripe paid off because it looks exactly like I wanted it to look -- like an ornate picture frame and the green fabric is like the mat.  Best of all, the center medallion with borders attached is actually the size it needs to be to connect to the pieced diagonal set block borders that I spent, oh, just a few years on...  

Yes!

That corner is square -- it looks funny because I took the picture at an angle when I was pressing the border on my ironing board.  I was so worried about the stripes not meeting up perfectly at the miter!

I Love My Borders!

Now I can't imagine this quilt any other way than with my happy little border stripes around the center medallion.

Alright, I don't think you need to see pictures of all four corners, do you?  But there are a couple of other detours I'm contemplating.  

I Was SO PLEASED With This Fussy-Cut Tree...

For instance, when I pieced this particular block 5 years ago, I worked so hard with my fussy-cutting and wanting all the points to be perfect, and did not realize until the block was finished that because of the diagonal setting, my little Christmas tree in the center of the block is leaning like the Tower of Pisa:

Do I Fix That Crooked Christmas Tree?

So...  Do I fix that or leave it alone?  The thing is, I'm NOT willing to take the block apart, remake a new one from scratch, or even remove it from the setting triangles.  Since the block is nicely starched and crisply pressed, I think I'd carefully remove the center patch with the crooked tree, glue-baste a new piece of fabric behind the hole, and then reverse applique it in place.  

Should I Embroider Label Info On the Front of This Quilt?

Also, as I was looking at this up on the design wall, I kept seeing embroidered dates in that birdie-wreath block in the center of the bottom border.  So I'm thinking of embroidering 2013-2019 in the center of that block, like you see in some of the old Baltimore album quilts.  My husband the quilt expert (not!) doesn't like that idea.  He doesn't understand why I would put that on the front instead of just putting the dates on the label on the back of the quilt, but it's kind of like when they put a date on the cornerstone of a building.  It adds historical interest.  Also, it answers that question people always ask "Oh my gosh you MADE THIS?!!  How long did it TAKE?!!!"  And perhaps when people see that it took me 6 years to finish this quilt, they won't even ask the follow up question "Will you make one for ME?!"  Hah!

This quilt is destined for a wall in my family room where I'm planning to display it throughout Advent and Christmas each year.  No one is ever going to be looking at the label on the back of this quilt.  

My Son, Anders, Posing With His Roman Square Blocks in 2013

And someday my son Anders gets this quilt, because he was hanging out with me in my sewing room a lot back when I first made the blocks in 2013, and making a quilt of his own.  We watched Tom & Jerry cartoons and Fraser reruns, and I loved listening to him laugh.  It's hard to believe that was six whole years ago until I look at the pictures and see how small he was back then.  Now he's almost 16 years old, and he is towering over me at about 5'10' or 5'11"!  

Six Years Later...  Anders' High School Orchestra Concert

Ah, my sweet little boy is turning into a handsome young man, and these abandoned blocks are finally turning into a quilt!  Anders also gets this Jingle quilt someday because he has been relentlessly nagging me to finish it all these years -- but for now, it's mine!

I had planned to finish assembling this quilt top with the remaining borders today, but I was so tired when I got home from church that I decided to just lay down for a nap -- and ended up sleeping most of the day!  Very disorienting when I woke up and it was already getting dark outside, but my body must have needed the rest.  Well, there's always tomorrow for borders and things...  And by "things," I mean embroidering dates and fixing crooked Christmas trees.  Or not.  What do you think?  I'm still undecided.

I'm linking up with:

• ·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com  
• ·       Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/
• ·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
• ·       Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/
• ·       BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com/blog/