Common Bride top Completed!

After 5 years of working off and on, I completed my Common Bride quilt top yesterday.  I finally started at a Sit 'n Sew at Elaine's back when she was doing fund raising for bike rides and would press and rip for us during the day.  That was the end of November 2014.  When I search the blog for Common Bride, I see reference to wanting to start it for two years before that.  

Here's the completed top

and a look at the final border that was my goal for this month.  I'd wanted to atleast get the the borders completed.  They went together very easily at a Sit 'n Sew last week and over the weekend I was able to add 3 of them to the top.  Yesterday morning at a Monday Sewing group, I made the corner blocks then added the 4th border and the 4 corners.  There may have been a small happy dance after I put the top down to show it to the ladies.

These are the little sections that needed to be joined to make the borders.  Once they were joined, a dark triangle was removed from one end and a triangle of checker board was added so the border would allow the corners to flow.

I'm still debating exactly how I want to quilt this.  I know I saw several of them completed and hanging in a show just before I started working on mine so I'll go back and look at those for inspiration.  I have been debating about hand quilting it but the stars and outer border make me hesitate with all the seams and tiny pieces.  

The star blocks are hand pieced and the applique is all hand done.  The rest is machine pieced.  

The pattern is from Laundry Basket Quilts  (links to pattern in store.  No affiliation, just the easiest place to show you).  

Linking up with Patty's One Monthly Goal.  I'm grateful for the encouragement this has given as working on completing parts of this quilt has been my goal over the last year or so.  Tiny steps each month (or some not so tiny) have meant I finally have a completed top.  I think Christmas A-Z will be next up for some focused attention but I have a week to think about that