Celtic Solstice

The day after American Thanksgiving last fall, Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville released her mystery quilt. This time, instead of collecting the patterns like I did for the previous year, I actually dug out fabric and started to stitch along. I took my fabric up to Dad's over Christmas and once I'd done the sewing he wanted, I spent some time stitching away on the mystery quilt. It was very nice. I initially was making the small size which was a 7x7 layout. Last month when I finally got the blocks all made and up on the design wall I decided I really liked how it was turning out. The 7x7 size was going to be too small for a double bed so I took my tape measure and measured the mattress -- yes there are charts to tell the size of a double bed but I wanted an overhang and its a deep mattress. I ended up making another 32 blocks to bring it up to 9x9. I'd hope to have it all done to take for show and tell at Sew Sisters Monthly quilt but Friday night, I had the centre done and one of the pieced borders prepared.

 

Saturday morning I stitched two more pieced borders and a long piece of cream fabric for the inner border but ran out of time and had to leave for the class and an afternoon at Reptilia with Karen.

 

When I got home Saturday evening, I went to work finishing the last pieced border. 

It was still early so I measured the cream bits and started adding borders.  By the time I went to bed, this was the state of the top.

 

The pattern calls for one more border in green. I want the last border but I don't think I want green so today I've been hanging pieces of fabric up next to the top trying to decide what colour I want. I'm leaning towards a blue but I'm not sure if I like the one I have enough of -- I don't have enough for both border and binding although there is a dark blue that I could use to bind. I think I'll look a bit more.

Dark blue / dark green

Orange

Yellow / Blue

 Of these options only the dark green isn't a fabric that's actually in the quilt somewhere.  I'm trying to see if I can find the last piece in my stash or Mom's cause so far everything has come out of the stash.  I'm rather pleased with that. The pattern was actually to have all of the alternate blocks be the square around the pinwheel (green, orange and yellow block) but in one of the links from Bonnie's site, I saw a post with the alternate layout of that block.  I liked both and was trying to decide which one I liked best when I saw a layout that combined the two.  That made for an easier decision :)