Hand Off

I never used to think of myself as a procrastinator, but I think I am becoming one. I had purchased the fabric for the border of Bert's quilt when my mom was visiting a couple weeks ago, but it took me a week and a half before I finally got around to cutting it and sewing it on. The main motivator was that we were headed up to see my parents this past weekend, and I would be able to hand the quilt off to my aunt, who is going to hand quilt it for me. I mean, for Bert.

One afternoon while the Bert man napped, I laid out my backing fabric and quilt top to see how much of a border I could add. I had already purchased the backing fabric based on the original size of the quilt and didn't want to buy more, so I needed to find a border size that worked with what I had.

After a little math (which you can't really see on that washed-out notepad), I decided to cut my border 4 1/2" so that it would end up as a 4" border when all the sewing and binding is done. All that orange you see is the border fabric.

So there it is, the first border pinned on...

And the finished quilt top.

My aunt had at least a hundred quilting stencils to choose from, so I pondered over them for awhile. (Wish I had a photo of that!) I am really excited to see how it comes out. And grateful that I don't have to do all that stitching! She tells me it will take a couple months to finish (which sounds like speed-quilting to me, because I'm pretty sure it would take me a lifetime) so I'll be sure to share photos when it is all done.