This quilt went on the frame right before I left for New Jersey.  I got a bit of the blocks done, but have returned to it in earnest.  I had to pull it off this afternoon because of that border.  Wow.

Holy Extra Fabric Batman.

The other 3 borders are pretty wavy, but I am going to be able to beat them into submission without too much trouble.  This one, though.  I could have taken some pleats on the frame, but I’m never 100% happy with how that turns out.

SO, I did something wacky.  I didn’t take the border completely off, but I opened up the seam and then I smooth everything out and took my scissors to the border.

I took out THREE inches of extra fabric:

THREE inches.  Please.  If you piece quilts.  Please do yourself a favor and learn how to apply borders that FIT a little better than this did.  I don’t care about perfect, heck, my borders are rarely perfect, but I surely don’t have THREE extra inches gathered up in them.

I’m quilting the blue and pink borders at the same time.  I’m doing the whole quilt with a white So Fine thread.  The outer borders flow from the middle to the corners, the white borders flows from the corners to the middle.

I got pretty tricky on the hearts.  I did the first 2 freehand, and then I used the computer to record the 3rd one.  Actually, I recorded each heart, and then I put it back together on the computer, so I had a little more flexibility about the connections.

There are 30 (?) heart blocks…which is 120 hearts if you want to get specific about it…having the computer do them for me was heaven.  It took 2.3 minutes for the computer to stitch a block after I spent about 1.5 minutes setting up the block.  2.3 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but you wouldn’t believe how much picking up and puttering around you can do in 2.3 minutes.

I still have to do most of the sashing and 3 of the 4 borders, and I’m contemplating recording the sashing, too, since the blocks went so well.

This is why I bought my IQ.  It’s MY stitching, only smarter and more efficient.

And I can use all the help I can on the smarter thing.