SAHRR 24 Border 4

This week's border in the SAHRR (Stay at Home Round Robin hosted by Quilting Gail) is my response to the prompt from Brenda at Songbird Designs: "square in a square or an on point block." Well, wouldn't you know it, I did a square in a square block last week in my third round. I even mentioned to someone that I enjoyed making that block so much I could see making a whole quilt full of it. I felt like I needed to resist a squirrel. So this week I got to make more without chasing a squirrel after all. 

I started by making another identical SQ in SQ block with black points (rotating it for a mirror image of the fabrics). In my Quiltography designing software I made a whole bunch more with the same coloration, but it felt like the block was taking over the quilt, so I toned it all down and used white prints from the scrap bin to surround some of the lighter colors in the quilt. Because I wanted a border 6 inches wide, I added coping strips in the same fabrics as in the second round but reversed the order. (Coping strips. That is a term I learned during this SAHRR. I always referred to those as "skinny borders." Now I know the technical term.) I messed around with the placement for a bit before deciding to add sashing strips between the SQ in SQ blocks to keep the border light and airy. That took a little doing, too, because I first tried to line them up with the SQ in SQ I made last week, but with 2 inch sashing strips, I ended up with a block chopped in half at the top and left edges. (I did need to use a 1-inch coping sash in the lower right corner before using 2-inch ones in the rest of the border to make the strip of blocks long enough.) The borders are symmetrical, so I think it works okay that the SQ in SQs don't line up with last week's. My photo is a little off due to dark room conditions (snowing off and on) and dark green carpet shining through, so the sashes look kind of gray. All of the background is various prints and a few solids, with colors ranging from white to ivory. I used up a fair amount of white prints from my scrap bin.

This is how my plan looked. It took a lot of fussing around to get to this final plan, but that really kept me from wasting fabric and sewing time to figure things out. 

Oops, I see that I forgot to flip the top right block

My SQ in SQ blocks finish at 4 inches. I used the same 2 by 4 inch flying geese foundation paper patterns as in my migrating geese border from last week (freebie by Fresh Lemon Quilts), but combined them to make the SQ in SQ by taping two pattern pieces together on the seam lines. So easy. Everything came out exactly to the dimensions I planned. The quilt now measures 40 1/2 inches square with seam allowance (up from 34 1/2--forgot to include the size last week) My miter of the black striped fabric was a lot more fiddly to get in place this week (I don't know why), but I put it together the same way, sewing about an inch of each coping strip on at the corner and then hand basting the miter to make sure the stripes met accurately before sewing it by machine. Then I sewed the remaining edges of the coping strips. 

Yippee for a matched miter!

Thanks to Brenda for giving a prompt that scratched an itch for more Squares in Squares without having to chase a squirrel! If you want to see more of what everyone made this week go over to Songbird Designs for the party. Thanks to Gail for hosting this SAHRR. I never knew a QAL could be so much fun.

(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.)