SAHRR 24 Border 2

Well, that prompt was a surprise. I'm participating in the Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR) hosted by Quilting Gail and her friends, who give us a prompt each week to add a border to our initial block or panel. We are on our second week of adding borders, and our prompter this week is Anja of Anja Quilts. Her prompt? "Use 2 colours." (Or in my case, colors, as I'm in the US.) That was it. And then she said we could use whatever design we wanted.

I will admit that at first I was a bit...disappointed, I guess? I had envisioned my quilt as having bits of many colors sprinkled throughout. I really didn't want to pick just two of them, and have those steal the show. What to do, what to do. And then I had it. This is what's great about these prompts. They nudge us to use our creativity in ways we might not have expected. The answer suddenly seemed obvious: black and white backgroundish fabrics to set off whatever colorful bits might come next. And in no time at all, I had this week's finish.

I knew that I wanted to make a 6-inch border on two sides of the quilt. I have some good sized pieces of striped and polka dot fabric leftover from other quilts as well as some long strips of a floral cut off from from a backing. I cut the stripe at 1-1/2 inches wide to finish at 1 inch. The floral was just wide enough to cut 4-1/2 inch wide strips to finish at 4 inches. I cut the polka dot at the same width as the stripe. 

Can I say I'm really tickled with how the miter came out on the stripe? I sewed those striped borders at the corner first, starting about two inches away from the corner and then mitering them before sewing the rest of the length of the strips onto the quilt. It just seemed easier to do that to make sure the stripes would match up. I also basted them before machine sewing to make sure they stayed in place. I'm not mitering my other borders (unless I use the stripe again) but the stripes just look neat that way. 

The whole quilt now measures at 28 inches square (plus seam allowance). Thanks to Anja for a prompt that stretched my thinking! I'm sure the colorful bits will be back in another round, and those black and white prints will also come back into play. (Hmm, striped binding, maybe?)

I'm linking up with Anja at Anja Quilts, where we can all cheer each other's progress this week. You can read about the beginning of the SAHRR at Quilting Gail here, where there are also links to the other hosts who are giving us our weekly prompts. 

(Just a reminder: I'm not affiliated with any company, so when I mention products, services, or stores, I'm just documenting what I used or liked.)