Arizona Border Patrol?

Nope, nothing political here. I'm talking quilt borders in Arizona, not US/Mexican borders. I have been plugging along on my assembly spree, so now my quilt tops need borders, or not. I was originally making two purple lap quilts. I decided to sew them together and go for a twin size. I've already decided borders for this one, a purple and white zig zag, but no time to make it right now, so I'm putting it aside. I'm hoping to cut the pieces for it this week or next, and then I can sew the border as a leader/ender project.


Have you ever counted wrong and made way too many of a block? Well, I had a truckload of leftover HST's from DD#1's new quilt. No problem, I've been wanting to get rid of some of my huge stack of four patches, and this works. I have another of these hanging on my design wall too, that's how many extra HST's I had. I couldn't remember if the light squares of the four patches were supposed to follow the furrows or the dark squares. This one has the white squares following the furrows, the other has the dark squares. I'll compare them when I'm finished both tops and see which I like better. I was just digging through my stash, and I think I picked a fabric for the border. If there is enough of it, I'll border both of these quilts with it.

Since I was digging through my box of orphan blocks, I realized I had enough blocks in there to make several lap quilts if I just took the time to trim some of them to the same size. I will also have to cut a few fabrics for alternating blocks, but I think I can get some quilt tops made pretty quickly and empty my orphan block box quite a bit. That would be very good, and help me to my goal of donating 12 quilts for the year.


DD#1's quilt center is done. Now to decide on borders. Her internet connection in South Africa is not the fastest, so the easiest way for her to see things is for me to post it on my blog so bear with me here. I want her to be able to choose the borders for her quilt.


OK, Hannah, here is the paisley print you liked so well. I also have one other print I want you to consider for the wide border. I want to use a narrow inner border and you have six choices on that. This shows the wide paisley for the outer border, and brown, tan, or a sage/white stripe for the inner border.


Here is the same paisley, with sage, lime, or blue for the inner border.


Here is the other fabric I bought with borders in mind. To help keep it straight we'll call it concentric diamonds, OK? Here it is with the sage, lime, and blue.

And here is the concentric diamonds with the brown, tan, and sage/white stripe.

Since I know you love the paisley, if you choose concentric diamonds for the border, I'll use all the paisley I have for the back. It may not be enough, but it will be most of the back. If you choose the paisley for the border, I'll use something else completely for the back.

If any of you want to chime in with an opinion, feel free. Hannah (DD#1) gets final say though since it's her quilt.

I got the quilting stencils I ordered from www.stensource.com today. I am so excited to play with them on all of the smaller quilt tops I'm making. I was pleasantly surprised to find a paper with "Proudly made in the USA" with my stencils. If I end up wanting more stencils, I'll keep that in mind.

Tucson in June is hot, no way around that. Since I've been busy assembling quilts, I'm doing a lot of ironing as I add each row, and my little sewing room is roasting even with the air conditioner and the ceiling fan. Because of that, I decided I will spend a couple more weeks assembling as many quilts as I can, and then I'm going on a quilting spree. The machine I quilt with (my Juki) is in the living room, directly under a ceiling fan. My living room is much larger than my sewing room so it has better air flow and doesn't get as hot. I won't need the iron on either, so I think this will be a good plan for the hottest part of summer. I do have some non quilting projects to work on if I just want to sew, but they shouldn't be too bad to work on in the sewing room. Funny, in the winter I appreciate the iron warming up the room, but definitely not a plus in summer, and we should hit 105 degrees this weekend. Yuck!