To Border or Not To Border

I spent all of yesterday on one project! Just One! I can't believe I actually did that! Shocking I know.

By mid-afternoon, the rows were together and had a quilt nearing completion. All I needed to do was add the binding and I could move on.

Ummm, no.

I love this quilt so much and decided it would not be for sale but rather our spring/summer time quilt. And, because it finished kind of small it could only serve as a topper for our queen-sized bed. Which would be okay if Jim wasn't as huge as he is, but his surface area alone would take up most of the quilt. Since I like to be covered too I now had to investigate on how to get a border on my quilt-as-you-go method.

Here's somewhat of a pic of the quilt prior to adding any borders.

Block of the Month Without Borders

I decided on a piano keys type of border since I had some material left over from the block construction. Probably just about enough to get a piano key border made. 

Piano key borders take a long time to do when using a muslin foundation. The purpose of the foundation is to keep the keys at nearly a 90-degree angle and to keep the pieces somewhat aligned when sewing them together. 

I have attempted this border type without using the muslin and found myself wandering off in sewing them together and had shorted myself on one end or the other. The border construction took until dark (as you can see from the pic) to complete. And, then of course, I was still short on the last border by about a foot, so back to Jay to construct more. 

After construction, the borders are attached to the quilt together; front and back borders at the same time. Which sounds easy enough, but after starting the first one, found pinning is not an option but necessary when trying to keep all the layers aligned together under the walking foot. 

I ran out of steam around 9:00 last night. Today will hopefully see completion of this beauty. I have to get the batting in between the borders that were attached last night and then those have to be quilted and then trimmed before the binding can be constructed and attached. 

While I am enjoying this method of making a quilt, putting all the layers together on DW after the whole top is completed seems like the way to go from now on. This would be more fun on a piece that was a little smaller maybe or something requiring micro quilting; like this one.