Frilly Edges

This morning we ventured out into the frilly edges of Hurricane Irene! Apart from a bit of gusty wind there's not much sign of the stormy weather here yet, though I imagine we'll see some rain later today... nothing like the poor folk along the coast have seen.

But venture out at 9am we did, so I could get some more fabric! Well I must get the borders done if I'm going to get my quilt finished for the male quilters competition entry deadline on Sept 26!

I found a nice tan Kona cotton for $6/yd, so I got 3/4 yd of that, which should be enough to cut 4 or 5 inch strips, either straight (along the width of the fabric) or bias (diagonal up the fabric)... the online calculator says 2/3 yd is enough for 4" wide strips, but I'd really like to use 5" strips since I'm making up for the backing of my quilt being 43" and the top being about 48"... so, I'm intending to center the backing so there's 2.5" of quilt top over hanging it, so the border will stretch the 2.5" to where the quilt top ends, plus about an inch to go up the side of the backing / batting / quilt top, and maybe an inch to give a little border to the top...

all that mathematics seems to work in my head, but we shall see in practice! I'll be doing a dry run measurement with some fabric scraps first!

I also got a can of adhesive spray for attaching all the quilt layers together ready for pinning and then sewing. I got a heat one, that you apply, position the layers, let dry and then iron to fuse. At $16 per can it's not cheap, but a 40% coupon helped bring the price down to under $10! I'll report back on how well it works!

In other news, here's some pics from the beginnings of quilt 2! ... it will be made up of rectangular blocks each with a white strip border on 2 sides, so that's what I'm hand stitching together at the moment. There's quite a few of these (about 30) so I may get to experimenting with the sewing machine before long! :)

It's a rainy day theme and so far I've got 5 or the 8 patterned fabrics that the pattern calls for. Today I picked up the polka dots and rubber duckies ones!