Iceblossom

Ok, those borders turned out to be a bit more effort than I had supposed, it's a good thing I had a lot of that elephant fabric because the repeat was something like 11". Following the lines in the fabric, what I used was something like 7.25" cut, my crumb quilter is going to get lots of 4" strips. I had a long talk with myself to start with, that the pattern wasn't that obvious and that I could just cut across the grain and not worry about any of it. There is a deliberate about 1" drift that the strips slant on across the width of the fabric.

Anyway, plenty of fabric and OCD tendencies meant I fussy cut the seams for the borders as well as the cutting line, that's the picture -- just me giving in to my obsessive tendencies.

The Turtle Panel is another thrift store find from last year, again under my price point of $5. The only thing I did was add the realistic rock borders which came from another thrift store scrap. Originally I was going to piece a back using a turtle fabric that has been in the stash for a long time, but for this I decided to use another large scale fish print for the back. It is two different makers, the colors are a bit brighter on the back but that's the nice thing when you are doing realism -- the fish are the same!

Today I have another thrift store piece to put together, it's a simple rail fence. When I bought it, it had a miserable little 2" wide poly blend flimsy green broadcloth border which I took off. I think it needs one more row of blocks for a better size -- even though this is a thrift store find, I have many of the fabrics (or close enough) in my stash and think my row won't be noticeable. Then I will border it with a calico that will also be used for the back but I can't make the back until I know how big the front will be.

edit: I did take off one row of the quilt to make it fit better on the back, with that off I have exactly 4" top and bottom for the long armer! Plenty of extra width on the sides.