Bordering on Finished

Yesterday I was able to sew together all the blocks for the Bee Loving quilt. The two top rows were already finished, and the third row went on fairly quickly.

In this middle of sewing the third row sashing together, I got an idea from a comment my friend Sharon left on Friday's post. Remember this message from the selvage edge?

 Sharon suggested using it in the quilt label. As I was sewing the sashing blocks together, I thought, why not put a secret message right in the middle of the quilt? I had barely enough room to do it, but I trimmed one of the sashing blocks and then sewed the message to the bottom. Since I was right at that fringe edge of the fabric, I used some fray check to buff it up some.

Then I sewed it where it will be almost dead center in middle of the finished quilt.

It's a secret message for someone with sharp eyes. It makes me wish I had a teenaged girl to give this to.

From there I continued on with the fourth row. I waited until I had the fifth row finished before I added the bottom two rows to the top three.

Finally, all the blocks were sewn together.

That was enough sewing for one day, but I laid it out with my chosen border fabrics to see how it looked. I chose that yellow fabric in the sashing for its red spots. I thought they'd go with the red in the outer border. Nevertheless, when I laid these out together, I didn't like the looks of it.

Smitty didn't like it either.

So then I laid the remainder of the bee fabric down for the outer border instead. I like that much better. There's plenty, and so I'm going to use that instead.

I like it better too. It matches the colors in my furs.

So there you have it. Today I'll get those borders sewn on, and I'll do the newest pile of laundry while I'm at it. Also, there's bread to be baked. And then there will be bread to be eaten. It's a busy life, I'll tell you.