Sometimes when you’re creating something  you hit a problem, you can’t think of a solution you’re happy with….so you sleep on it, and in the morning the answer suddenly comes, clear as a bell, so it was my current quilt top…

I’m making a quilt as a thank you gift, I need to make it fairly quickly as it needs to be gifted by the end of November, so really it’s taken priority over Christmas presents! I decided to used the disappearing 4 patch block as it’s fairly quick to make but effective. I had a Moda Layer cake in my stash called   Hearts Content, by Laundry Basket Quilts. I bought it on line on the basis of the flowery patterns, only to find the layer cake included rather a lot of spots, I’m not really into spots, so it had sat in a drawer ever since! For those not into quilting yet, a layer cake is a co-ordinating selection of fabrics, cut into 10″ squares, with the Moda ones you often get 20 different fabrics, so two squares of each.

Disappearing 4 patch

I made twelve blocks of four 5″ squares, cut them into nine, rearranged them and re-stitched into 12 disappearing 4 patch blocks. I was really pleased with the finished blocks, but it did turn out a bit smaller than I anticipated. It needed a decent sized border!

I found a co-ordinating plain blue at Hobbycraft, initially planning to do a ‘piano key’ border with the blue either side, but I decided it would look too bitty. I tried some of the fat quarters I’d got from the same range as a wide border, one in particular looked really good, but there wasn’t quite enough to make a reasonable width of border, like about 3″, I was about 6″ short!!! I considered using a different fabric to fill the gap centrally on the border and perhaps embroidering a message on it, but I just wasn’t happy with the plan. It was bed time by then, so I slept on it!

In the morning, it suddenly came to me, just put a square at each corner, so simple, why didn’t I think of that in the first place!

Last night was Friday Night Sew In over on Sugar Lane Designs, it’s a linky party for those planning to spend Friday Night sewing, it’s quite nice to think of all those other people sewing away at the same time around the world. I decided to crack on with my quilt.

I stitched a narrow border in the blue, followed by a 3″ border in the pretty Moda fabric, with a square from the layer cake fabrics at each corner, I had 4cm of the border fabric left at the end!! I finished with a wide blue border. whilst not a full size quilt, it’s now an acceptable size. I’ve got just enough of the blue left for binding at the end.

I’m making a pieced back from fat quarters with a row of squares left over from the layer cake going up the middle, just got to quilt it then!