Quilt Border – OccasionalPiece

Now where were we?

I think we left the Flowering Snowball block here:

Don’t get me wrong…that was a good place to leave it, and I still might try to make this version of it, but the idea that I should do one in Anna Maria Horner fabrics just wouldn’t leave me alone. Thanks to Patti, I just had to give it a go.

First draft, using 12″ blocks from the PatternLite Flowering Snowball pattern:

The finished quilt center:

For some time I was stumped on what to do for a border. I try to subscribe to the Ruth McDowell school of sneaking in a border if you can, that is, having it be integral to your quilt, but not the same as the quilt.

I tried to do that with Summer Snowcone.

As well as a version of it with Sawtoothmania.

I looked at the center section for a long time, and was bothered that the tips of the petals were cut off. So I had the idea to extend the petals, re-draw a new border piece and see where that took me.

First draft of border, using the petals I’d originally cut for the center (but in the end, chose the warm yellow-green instead):

This is still an AMH fabric, called One Mile Radiant, a lovely design with Queen Anne’s lace all over it. I’d show you what it looks like, but I cut it all up.

(Aren’t we supposed to do that with fabric?)

The white was ho-hum, just didn’t sing it for me. So I auditioned different colors of solids: medium purple, light periwinkle and deep pink.
But as I said to Carol, “That dark pink on the left just looks like freshly manicured fingernails to me.”
And then she said, “Once you see that, you just can’t un-see it.”

Reject.

The smart and handsome youngest son and his brilliant and lovely girlfriend came yesterday for an early Father’s Day lunch (which is why this post is late but that’s a good reason), and they graciously posed in front of Sunny Flowers just before Dave (DH) suggested they go up to the sewing room to help me with my conundrum of freshly painted fingernails. They were like, what?

But then I showed them the stack of AMH and started flipping through the bits, and one of these two said, What about that one? pointing to what is now front and center.
I think that might work, I said.
We all agreed (by now Dave had joined us) that the tips of those leaves were like an extension of the yellow-green and that the pink bits echoed the center of the larger flowers in the quilt.

So, after church today, we went out back to the pavilion and park and took a few pictures, before heading home to celebrate Father’s Day. As usual, Dave was my Quilt Holder Supreme. My newest pattern, Blossom, contains all the parts for this quilt, as well as three other sizes, including that original border block.

Happy Father’s Day to the man who married me and four children, all at once, and raised us all.

The day my husband became a father to four children. He’s a keeper.

I was also fortunate enough to have a magnificent father, who raised me, as well as being surrounded by many fine fathers: brothers, brothers-in-law, our sons, friends we know — all men who are doing their best to influence their families for good.

Happy Father’s Day, everyone!

Our grandchildren: a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

At least that’s what Google Translate said it meant, when I typed in…

…which is the newest song for the newest dance craze, introduced to me by my daughter on Instagram as well as other celebrities (make sure you turn on the sound):

And this led me to a whole rabbit hole of watching lots of people dance in 7 second spurts (mostly young ones, hence the title of this post makes sense), the thieves being whoever stole all those years from me when I was busy raising children, schlepping groceries and making an occasional quilt.

Which led me to an article in the New York Times that found a correlative link between creativity and exercise:

“If you often exercise, there’s a good chance you also tend to be more creative, according to an interesting new study of the links between physical activity and imagination. It finds that active people come up with more and better ideas during tests of their inventiveness than people who are relatively sedentary.”

There is no hard and fast connection, but maybe all these dancers are on to something. And yes, I downloaded the song to listen to while on my walks, but you can forget me trying to do that dance.

My burst of enthusiasm for the Triple Sunflower took several hits this week, as I tried to figure out where this quilt is leading me. Here’s the progression in two montages, Progression Forward and then, Progression Backward:

Too blah, too pastel, and as my husband pointed out, the flowers and stems in the center were bolder than the borders. The quilt was headed to a pastoral landscape, but I was thinking more Paul Gauguin or Wolf Kahn, with more saturated color. And I noticed the slight curve on the right border and worried it was going to amplify onwards, outward through all the rest of the construction. It was at this point that I emailed The Medallion Quilt Queen, Melanie of Catbird Quilt Studio, who knows everything about medallion quilts. She talked me down off the proverbial ledge, and got me re-oriented towards making progress:

Yes, progress meant I ripped off all the previous borders and then, in between watching young people dance on Instagram, doing all the laundry and shuffling nearly every fabric in my stash from the ironing board to the design wall and back again, I finally added the medium-dark blue border. I am also auditioning some brighter fabrics for the next one. Which I will probably change again.

The happy dance this week was having Kelley, my quilter, stop by and show me some new samples she’d stitched out, and we auditioned them for my Wealth of Days quilt. Can’t wait to see it finished.

I’ll give social media the last word: