I worked like crazy to do this new border in one week. A few burgundy borders will follow this border. At this point the quilt top occupies the center of the queen sized mattress with about six to eight inches on each of the four sides.

I took my photographs today at at time when shadows were being cast on the front porch, which is my staging area for photographs. I decided to stretch out the quilt top on the porch at an angle and go for some artsy effects.

We’ll call this one “Prisoner of Paper Piecing”.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to quilt this piece. I’ve decided to use the two units that I found recently, which I thought had been lost, and create a small baby sized quilt using them. I can try out my quilting method on the new piece because it will have the hunter green and crimson hexagons dancing across the surface just as they do on the larger quilt top. The quilting I have in mind is going to emphasize the hunter green and crimson hexagons.

I am going to have to make two more units like the ones I already have. I will be joining the units with burgundy flowers, and making a burgundy flower border on all four sides. The piece will probably come out to  be about 36″ x 36″ making it large enough for a baby buggy quilt. I anticipate that this quilting sample will take me a few weeks. You can see the batik flower unit at the top of the image below, and the solid flower unit at the bottom. I will make one more of each of those units and place them diagonally in the design of the baby quilt.

Something I really like about doing this sample is that it is going to allow me to join those large square units with rows of flowers of a different color. That was my initial thought for the larger quilt, so now i get to see that idea realized even if on a small scale. At the time I considered this design I did not yet have the burgundy fabric. Things might have taken a different turn if I had already owned that fabric at the time that I etched my piecing strategy in stone.

I am even starting to get some ideas for a hexagon quilt done in a quilt-as-you-go method using units like the ones above appliquéd to a solid fabric and joined with rows of hexagon flowers appliquéd onto narrower strips.

I love it when the ideas flow from one project to the next. That’s the way I like to work.