I would maybe just do the center of the quilt with one border of the striped fabric and one of the blue. That will make it considerably smaller, and should look just fine. You never have to follow a pattern exactly, and you can always just do what you want to your taste. It should look beautiful any way you do it...I like those fabrics a lot!!

Thanks everybody!!

Another "By the Sea" Quilt Pattern and Question
 

Hi! I hope your quilt worked out well. The link to the exact pattern your doing is no longer working but it sounds very pretty with the hydrangeas. I love this R22 line. I'm a newbie quilter making a gift quilt with it for my sister to use at her lovely beach home and I'm hoping to get some opinions on that outer border fabric (2792-0150 pictured here).
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This fabric has approx. a 7" repeat so I only get to cut once and my pattern calls for a 6 1/2" fussy cut strip. Here is a link to the pattern for a visual: http://www.marcusfabrics.com/cgi-bin...i?patternID=59. I'm thinking of omitting that thin seaweed strip and just centering the beautiful wide shell strip in that 6 1/2" span. I think that will be easier to fussy cut (fussy cutting scares me and is why my project is at a standstill LOL!), but mainly I'm thinking the shell strip will be more of a focus point and that way and there will be less white space because to me it looks somehow off balance. Any thoughts on that? I keep laying it out and trying to determine what to do, wanting to get all the beauty of this theme that I can, but knowing I can only cut once.

Me again, after laying it all out together, I decided to keep the seaweed strip. It actually looks good! (can't go wrong with such a pretty line of fabrics) I'm just going to cut each strip as wide as I can get to make more white space on each side of the wide strip. Hopefully what I'm picturing will work and it will just be slightly bigger than the quilt in the picture. But, however it turns out will be fine, I've just got to take the plunge and cut!