The wedding quilt saga - continued

I suppose it would be unfair of me to not keep you updated with how it's going with this rather quick project.

When I went to bed on Sunday night, it was this far.

On Monday I knew I had to kick it into high gear - in fact, I hadn't slept very well thinking about how much I wanted to get done - 

I needed to make the hearts that were to go with the checkerboard border, so I got right on those. I did get the hearts made by about 10:30 or 11 am, and got the borders put together and "on the body of the quilt by just about noon.  

The blocks were 6.5" unfinished, but I needed a finished 7.5" block -

I added a 1 1/4" strip to each side to make a block that was 8" unfinished but would finish in the quilt at 7.5" - the same as the checkerboard blocks

We eat our big meal about 1 pm, so earlier in the day I had put a pork roast in it - after searing it in a pan with garlic and dried onion. I then cooked it in gravy all morning while I went about my project.

This is where the quilt was when my husband made the comment that he thought it was finished. I told him, "No, it's not quite big enough yet!" But i adjusted the inner border planned at 2.5" to only 1/2". I needed to have at least a little border to make the final one work right.

After I got the border on, I took some pictures and then began to think more seriously about dinner. About 12:45 I asked my husband to get us some corn from the garden (he enjoys doing that) and I went to cut up green beans and get them cooking as quickly as I could. He brought in the corn, I had the water boiling and in the pot it went. The beans were cooking, but weren't quite done at 1 pm. I let them cook another 5 min. while we started eating our other things.

When my husband had walked in the door before lunch, he had looked at the top, which was lying on the floor in the living room area, and said, "That's pretty big!"  I told him it was just 83"x83" and would shrink some with quilting and washing, so I needed it bigger than that!  I had planned on a bigger inner border and then the other border with pieced blocks. But, I didn't have the right blue for that 2.5" border. When he mentioned that it seemed almost big enough, I realized I could instead of a  2.5" border make a .5" border and then all should fit.  I could find enough of any shade of blue I happened to have as it would only take about 9" of it instead of 3/4 of a yard!

Here I am auditioning blues for the next border - but I couldn't find anything I liked.Then, when I realized that I didn't need to make it so wide, I had more options.

I needed 84 of these blocks.

So, I decided on a blue fabric for the border, but went to work on the pieced blocks. I cut up some 2.5" squares for snowballing two corners of my 4.5" squares and went to the sewing machine to make up those 84 blocks. It took a while, but I finished making those blocks by about 5 pm.  I went ahead and made up my border strips - 4 strips of 21 blocks each - trying make the colors work as best as I could.

I then finished putting those borders on and after doing some more pressing, declared the top "finished" at 6:22 pm!

Here's the final layout - 

I decided that I needed to go ahead and sandwich it, so I did that on Monday evening about 8:30-9:10 after getting a backing ready among a couple other things that came up!

These clips have been wonderful. I found them at Lidl one time when my husband was getting them for his workshop. I thought these smaller ones would be perfect for holding the quilt to the table! (It's been a problem for me!)

After sandwiching I went ahead and wound some bobbins, set up the table next to my machine to hold the weight of the quilt and got my gloves out.

Ready for quilting! Now if only I can get some inspiration as to HOW to quilt it!  I've pretty much blocked off most of Tuesday for quilting this thing!

And that's where I am with this little tale of the wedding quilt.

One thing - I actually have quite a few "bonus triangles".  I'm considering making them a throw pillow or two to go with the quilt, if I have time!:)

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Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!

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