Twisted Ribbon Border

Sorry to spoil things, but I just HAD to show this picture first of all!! I was trying to take a simple photograph of the completed quilt top this afternoon. The quilt was blowing gently in the breeze and it moved just as I took the photograph - anyway, I thought oh that will do - and posted it on all the quilting FB groups that I belong to, and received SO many lovely comments!! I've had lots of requests about where the pattern can be bought from, and I honestly have no idea. This was a scheme called "Stash Pot Pie" which my local quilt shop Quilters Haven took part in. It lasted for a year, and each month we were given a list of fabric requirements and the cutting instructions - the idea was to use up fabrics from your stash. Then on the day of the class we were given the instructions for making the quilt top, and had a tutor to show us the techniques and to help us. It was a great class, and I've shown some of my other "Stash Pot Pie" quilts on my blog earlier here. So if anyone wants the pattern, I would suggest they contact their local quilt shop for further information!.....

.....anyway - back to the quilt top! The next stage in the "Lattice Top" quilt was to add the borders. An inner border, an outer border, and in the middle a twisted ribbon border. The pieces for the twisted ribbon border had already been cut 5 years ago when I took part in the class for this. However it was then packed away and forgotten about! Having the pieces already cut out has certainly made life a lot easier. I thought the middle border looked a bit tricky, but found it wasn't that difficult after all, and I'd already joined pairs of the twisted ribbon blocks 5 years ago - once I'd sewn a few pairs together it wasn't so bad.....

.....I used different white tone-on-tone fabrics for the inner and outer borders, in keeping with the different tone-on-tone fabrics I had used for the blocks.  This shows the way the borders will look when they are all joined together - HOPEFULLY!! A pieced border always looks really tricky, and I was wondering if it was going to fit.....

.....the inner border was a "spacer" and would need to be trimmed to fit, according to the pattern instructions, after they were sewn into place. I thought this would be wasting time AND fabric, so I did a few sums - and because my blocks were accurately pieced, I quickly worked out what measurement the inner borders needed to be before I added them to the quilt top. And yes!! my sums were right! The pieced "twisted ribbon" side borders fitted perfectly!.....

.....I then added the 4 corner stones to each end of the top and bottom pieced border, pressing the seams inwards, to make it easier to "nestle and wrestle" the seams. The top and bottom borders also went on very easily - no unpicking at all! Then it was just the outer borers to frame the whole quilt.....

.....now it's going to be packed up ready to take over to Janette as soon as she's back from her holidays to be longarm quilted - I was thinking about having an all-over meandering stars design for this one. As yet I have no idea what colour quilting thread to chose - maybe I'll leave that up to Janette - she always manages to pick just the right colour! Oh and for those of you who are interested yes this WAS made mostly with fabrics from my stash - the red and blue fabrics were left over from my "Road to Oklahoma" quilt, the background fabric for the blocks was from a fat quarter bundle of whites and creams - it's amazing what I've found stashed away in my very own quilt shop at Foreman Towers!!