I was able to get a little bit of that stem appliqued down on Raining Cats and Dogs.  But it doesn’t look much different from yesterday so I didn’t bother taking a picture.

Raining Cats and Dogs
Stem down
11/1/2015

I put away Missing Ivy but before I did I put Block A and Block B together on my design floor so we can see how it’s looking so far.

Missing Ivy
Blocks A and B placed
Design Floor
11/2/2015

I am loving how it’s coming together.  I haven’t looked at the next steps but it probably has to do with the half triangles and then the borders.  At the rate this is going, I may be able to get this completed (quilted and bound) early next year.  I can keep my fingers crossed. 🙂

I practiced a little bit on Bailey and I’m getting comfortable with it.  But nowhere near confident.  That may take some time so after this practice quilt is done, I’ll put Scrapitude on the frame and just go with it.  These are my first few attempts so I’m just going to have jump in and tackle it head on. 🙂 No one is expecting perfection!

And finally, this week’s project is Hampton Ridge.  Yup, I decided that the backing for Moon Glow can wait another day.  I would rather get closer to a finished top with Hampton Ridge.  I pulled out the final packet and took out all the luxurious fabric and read through the instructions.  There are 4 borders to attach.  Borders #1, 2, and 3 are fairly easy in that they are just one border fabric.  Border #1 and #3 are the same fabric.  Border #2 is a different fabric and is slightly more complicated in that they will be mitered.  Border #4 is a lot more complicated in that it involves 350 HSTs. 🙁  boo.  What makes it worse is that the instructions indicate that I should be using “Star Single” Triangle paper and they were not included in my packet. 🙁   The BOM included it throughout the program and suddenly for the final packet, it was not included.  I’m kind of irritated.  I tried to contact the quilt shop via their website but I’m not sure it worked.  I’ll wait a week and then I’ll call.  The good news is that it isn’t necessary until Border #4 and I’ll probably spend the rest of this week working on the borders before hand.  Here’s the thing, I’m pretty organized about this kind of stuff.  I keep all the pattern pages in a binder along with the templates they provided and all the Triangle Papers they provided previously (I still have all the extras that I had received).  None of them are the 2″ kind.  All the fabric and packets and even the inner top were packed together in a project bin.  So, I’m pretty confident that I didn’t misplace it or lose it.  However, I will concede that I did move over the summer and things happen so, there’s a chance it could have been misplaced or lost.  If I have to, I can go buy these things.  But I’m going to wait and see what the quilt shop says first.

Once I mentally moved passed that (because of course I had to pull everything out and look), I started to work on Border #1.  It will consist of 272″ of 1 3/4″ strips all around the inner top.  First, I pressed the fabric.  Then I cut my 1-3/4″ strip.  I usually cut my borders from from parallel to the selvage and I cut a pair at once.  I read, heard, was taught this somewhere from someone.  I do not know if this is the normal way quilters do it or if it was a quirk I picked up along the way.  I figure I’ll share with you in case you didn’t know this.  But the selvage or lengthwise grain (per the image) has the least amount of give.  So if you use that for borders, your border shouldn’t be wavy.

Anyway, I was in the process of putting my strips together when a thought came to my head.  I was at a guild meeting and one of the ladies was showing us how to do the quarter inch border.  Anyway, she said to piece them together straight, like this:

straight pieced
(it’s not really pieced but just pinned together for example purposes only)

But I usually piece them the same way I piece my binding strips together, which is drawing a diagonal line:

sewing on the line, cut that little triangle on the upper right side of the line (leaving a quarter inch from the sewed line, of course) and then opening it up:

I believe it isn’t done this way on a quarter inch border because it would be too bulky.  But it made me think that maybe I’ve been doing it wrong for my borders all this time.  Maybe this is only supposed to be done this way for binding as that diagonal line gets lost in the binding.  Maybe the proper way is to do the straight line.  Of course, no one notices and probably doesn’t care.  But I wondered so I wanted to know how you do it.  Please comment and let me know.  Thanks!

I’m looking forward to a great week!

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Have a great week!

~Melanie