Indecision Brought to a Forum

For the most part, my little Crossweaves solid quilt has been on hold for a week.  I have been quilting away on several client quilts, and I hit a brick wall on the quilt's construction.  I had gotten the quilt to this point a week or two ago, and like the look of the rose and red border.  You all know me well enough to know that I have too much trouble taking the easy way out.  Why I didn't do a single color border initially is not known.  I had a 1/2 yard of many different colors, and really wanted to bring the variety of these colors into the quilt. 

Problem is this, though.  This quilt will only finish at about 38-39", and these are thicker fabrics.  So the more I piece them, the more I get bulk.  I had the top all layed out with the next triangular sections, but after hand sewing (yea, long story short...I couldn't get proper alignment of the narrow 1/2" borders, so I glued it and hand stitched the diamond to the triangles.), I discovered that it just wouldn't lay down at the seams.  I was ticked.  I had dealt with the bulk acceptably on all of the pieced blocks, so why not now?  

So the clearest solution seemed to be to take it all apart and eliminate the pieced pink border, which I really liked, and make it a continuous/solid border.  Boring, my mind thought, but easier.  The next step was to select the border color, cut and sew.  Seemed simple and fast.  Ha!  It was anything but fast. I had an idea what fabric I'd choose, but instead, I posted some possibilities to my facebook buddies to get some other opinions.  The first six posted had solid borders.  Not to my surprise, most either selected the red or the aqua.  A few chose the brown, despite my knowing that I didn't have enough brown fabric.  What was my inclination, you wonder?... (or not wonder)...#1, the beige.

 But before making up my mind, I decided to add some corner stones, just so I could add a pop of a different color.  Some folks disliked these right off.  The overwhelming favorite, though, was the bottom right one  - aqua with red.  Ick.  I do not care for aqua and red together whatsoever.  It's too trendy-retro 50's for me.  Each color is great by itself, but not together.  As I said initially, I got lots of opinions, and that is what I wanted, hoping one of them might spark a design choice I had not thought of.

 My last effort involved streamlining the corner stones to a more refined shape.  Since lots of people liked the aqua, I showed this one.  And because I preferred the beige, I added it.  To twist it a little, I made the corner diamonds in a deep rose, not the red.  By this point, I think people were falling asleep on my indecision, but I'd made up my mind I'd go beige.  I'd have more blank space for quilting.  And, I really didn't care for the aqua because the triangles seem to blend in with it too much.

Today, after 4 hours of quilting, it was time to mess with this border.  I got out my fabrics, and to my horror discovered that I did not have enough of the beige.  DRAT.   What I settled on was a fabric I had not even considered before though.    These are crossweaves -- so the warp is one color and the weft is another.  The fabric I chose appears red in some situations, and peachy in others.  It has a red warp and a tan weft.  When  it is beside red, it looks like a paler red.  I did use the red diamond points, instead of the pink and they look good.

All put back together, and happily I can report that triangles came in perfect alignment the first time (using the machine too!).  One more border to figure out how to get on with decent lines, and it is DONE (or I should say, ready to be quilted)! 

 It is always pleasing to get a finished product that I like better than my initial designs were!