Ready For Borders...

I recently finished piecing the top for my vintage embroidery quilt...BTW, I need to come up with a snappy name for the quilt, so if you have any ideas, please post them!   I still need to add a border, but I need to go shopping because I don't have enough of any one 1930's reproduction fabric to make the border.  

The 25 pieced blocks sewn together measure 88" X 88" and I plan to add a 6" border all the way around to make it 100" X 100".  I've tossed around the idea of quilting this one "by checkbook"...which is where you send it out to be quilted by someone else, either longarm-quilted or hand quilted...in this case longarm quilted, because I don't feel like hand quilting this one and didn't feel that I could "do it justice" with my machine quilting.   If I did send this one out to be longarm-quilted, it would be the first ever that I haven't quilted myself, either by hand or by machine.  

I am still thinking it over, but am pretty sure that I am going to go ahead and machine quilt this one on my Juki TL 2000Qi.  After all, that is why I bought the machine last summer...to make machine quilting my quilts a little easier.  Sending them out to be quilted isn't cheap and I'm such a tightwad!  And my mediocre maching quilting skills will just have to suffice.  "Done is better than perfection" as the saying goes.

Here is the top draped over the pole on my hand-quilting frame.  Sorry that you can only see 2 of the 5 rows...but you get the idea.

The pinwheel cornerstone blocks were made from the leftovers that were cut off when making the star points, so no scraps were wasted!

My goal this year is to work on some of the UFO's and projects that I've started previously and keep my new starts to a minimum.  ("Yeah, right", said all the quilters out there!!)

About 2 years ago, I started making some strip blocks from scraps to be used in "Tulip Fields", a pattern by Bonnie Hunter in her book "String Fling".  You can see a picture of her completed quilt by clicking here.  

I pulled the string blocks out that I had started and started adding the "tulips" to them ...

I've had a lot of fun making these so far, so until I have the fabric for the border on the embroidery quilt, I'm going to continue to toodle around with them and bust some more scraps while making them!  

After being in my new sewing room for 22 months, I've found that there are a couple of things that aren't working for me just the way I'd like.  I've been doing some thinking and planning on what I want to do to make the room more functional for me.  Since I'm going to need Andy's help with hanging the shelves, etc., that I want to do, I'll need to share my plans/ideas with him at some point...preferably at a time when he won't roll his eyes and shake his head at me!  

Loretta