Finished!

I can't quite believe it's finally finished. It's been hanging around in various project boxes for more than 15 years, inspiring guilt in me, and now it's done. 

I'm thinking I might ditch stitch all the blocks on the Statler, and then hand quilt the rest. It would be nice and relaxing to quilt, with those big shapes to outline. I've pulled out a few bolts of fabric to audition for backings, but I haven't made my choice yet.

I've been eyeing the Dear Jane all day, trying to decide where to start. Finally I opened up my drafting software, drew up an outline of the quilt and experimented with various sizes for the triangle and the coping border.

The original had an 8" border, making the top 85" square. No way I was making it that big. I kept trying different things and finally chose a 4.5" high triangle, which is a similar shape to the original. 

I even made a template and cut out a few pieces so I could hand stitch them together. When I was putting the Periwinkle together it occurred to me how easy it was to ease the hand-piecing into the required length, easy to stretch or to compress. So I will be hand stitching this border too.

That way it won't tie up any of my machines, it will be more enjoyable at a leisurely pace, and I can make decisions as I go along.  I need 17 triangles for each side, which is not a lot, and I'll be able to work at them tucked up on the couch keeping warm under my granny Afghan. 

I've dug out quite a lot of fabric scraps. Using a smaller triangle means I can use smaller scraps too

I need to do some mindless sewing after all the decision making, so I'm looking for something to just push through the machine. I might even get out my Bitcoin top and see what that needs for borders. 

I have heaps of strips already pieced as piano key borders, maybe I can extend those to be big enough? That should be fairly easy.

That's a 4" border. I can live with that.

The length doesn't need adding to, I might do a 3" strip top and bottom.  No matter what I decide, I need to cut some more 1.5" strips for my mindless sewing.