Christmas Quilts - Part 4

I finally got the border sewn on the Christmas quilt. It took much longer than I expected because of the type of border fabric I selected. It is a directional print that had a small gold border on the left hand side and a small red border with gold filigree on the right hand side. So I had to make the cardinals go around the quilt instead of having them be upright on both the right and left hand borders. With the birds going around the quilt the right hand side is the only one where the birds are upright.

In addition I barely bought enough fabric so instead of cutting all my borders to size, I just cut out the borders from the full length of the fabric and started working with them that way. The fabric had 3 rows of the cardinals, and then there were 2 rows of pine cones and 2 rows of poinsettias. Parts of those may end up being used for the back. So the two sides and the top were sewn from the full lengths of the fabric. Then the left over pieces were pieced together to make the bottom border. Amazingly I lucked out and was able to piece it in such a way that the flow of the birds was in tact.

After everything was put together the picture below is all that was left of the cardinal borders. Hardly any waste what so ever, or what a close call.

I was trying to figure out if there was a way to miter the corners so that I didn't end up with half birds, but I think the only way that could happen is if the inner quilt is sized specifically to the border and the placement of the birds or what ever other image you might have. The upper right hand corner is the only one where I succeeded in not having a part bird.

While I was working on this border an idea came to me for the quilting. I'm going to do some experiments with a modified trapunto technique that I saw and if it works I just might go for it. I'll keep you posted on the experiment and whether it works or not.