Fleurs - A Final 2014 Flimsy Finish

Ha, alliteration not fully intended, but there you go.

She had to be photographed in the back yard since we had the front lawn mowed today (drove my husband crazy to have someone else do his lawn--he has always been ANAL about his manicured lawn) but hey, we have no mower, and for $25 the guy did a terrific job.  The back is not the greatest of lawns, pretty sparse in actuality.

Notice anything different?  Nope?  Okay.  She talked to me.  A LOT.  (two words, people, remember that)  The final trellis border did not sit well.  At all.  I liked it; don't get me wrong, especially when I figured out how to construct the block with less seams, and once I figured out the error in the pattern (online at makoweruk.com).  The border had two problems:  the first was that it was too light.  I like a darker "frame" to end a quilt.  The second came to me after some time:  it was too wide for the scale of the other borders in this quilt.  So. 

I spent a good half day ripping the double-wide border down to a single width.  I had pieced two 6" blocks side by side making the final border 12".  It wasn't an easy rip because I'd sewed pairs together and then a pair to a pair, and so on.  Hence, it wasn't one long vertical seam to rip.  But whatever.  I am happy.  Fleurs is happy.  And then I knew she needed the solid frame.  Did I have enough of the green?  To make a 3" finished frame, which is an appropriate size for the 6" wide trellis, I needed 31.5" give or take...I had it.

How does one have this much fabric in one's stash?!  I'd bought 3 metres of it because I loved it, and because I had thoughts of maybe a navy and green quilt.  Then I used some of it in a Christmas 9-patch quilt I made about 10 years ago.  So now it is all gone but for about 5" times WOF.  Yay!

This quilt has been a little over a year in the birthing process.  Should've named her Éléphant!! It was a challenge devised by my guild in Kingsville, the deadline for which has long passed.  However, it was a great learning experience and pushed my creativity.  I liked that.

I had planned to quilt her on my Avanté, but she's whispering that she might like to be quilted down here on my Bernina, since the Avanté sits a thousand miles to the north...  I just might do that.  She measures a whopping 90.5" square.  Gulp.  I did do one that size once on my Bernina.

After the above photos, I saw our fence, and thought I might be able to peg her to the fence to get a face-on pic.  I did!  The fence is not tall enough but hey, I braved a scary-looking hill of fire ants to get this last one.  That's an empty lot (well not empty of bush!) beside us.

Yep, she'll do.  She'll do just fine!  The corners on this single round of trellis blocks did not all play nicely together (as in line up) with their respective rows, but if I didn't point that out, you might not have noticed.  Still, I am totally okay with this quilt, and more than okay that it is DONE!

Just a quick recap of each round for the Self Round Robin, given one per month over 7 months:
Choose an orphan block (mine was the centre appliqué Rose of Sharon, hand-appliquéd in oh, 2001 or so
Add:
1. stripes
2. flying geese
3. appliqué (she got stuck here a loooong time)
4. put words on it
5. add curves
6. 4-patches
7. final pieced border
(and I framed it for the 8th round)