I think working on the Pickled Ladies border has me thinking of nothing but borders. There are a couple of quilts that I’ve decided need something added in the way of a border.

First is last year’s Inklingo mystery – Margaritaville.  There are two batiks that I know I have to save a bit of from each for a sunflower, but I think both of them have potential to be the border I want to add to this. The clues for Margaritaville are still all available and this March 6, 2016 post at the All About Inklingo blog has links to all the clues for the mystery quilt.  The final clue has some great ideas for larger quilts. Now, looking at this one, it makes me wonder if I might not just have to make a larger one using different fabrics.

Option 1.

Option 2.

Mr. Q.O. and I have different opinions on which one works best. While I was leaning more to option 2 in the beginning, I think I may be starting to see his point about option 1 being better, particularly as I see there’s more pink that shows in it looking at these pictures. I have time to think about this for a bit because nothing’s happening until I get the Pickled Ladies finished.

Then there are a couple of other tops that I’ve decided to add some more to by way of borders.

First up is Scrappy Star. I am going to add another plain border in the background fabric, then another pieced border because I have an idea for yet another one that I have to add that was inspired, in part, from looking at the Case of the Stranger in Margaritaville top. Then it will be one final border in the background fabric and this will be done. By that point, I think it may well be a lap quilt size. I wouldn’t dream about doing this were it not for the fact I still have lots of the little diamonds left over and can make good use of them for the pieced border idea.

Looking at that quilt makes me wonder how it would look in my favourite shabby chic sort of fabrics with some batiks thrown in for fun. I doubt that I’d do another one just like this, but there’s an idea sort of percolating in my mind now.

Then there’s the X’s and O’s quilt top. I’m going to add one more plain border to it and then bind it with the same black fabric as was used for the first border. This was made with the Improved 9-Patch shapes from the Inklingo Orange Peel Deluxe collection – oh, how I love playing with the shapes in that collection! And I know I’m not done yet as I have yet another idea I want to make using shapes from it, again using some batiks and shabby chic fabrics. But looking at this has me itching to do something with ’30s prints again, too. I’m not quite sure what yet – but I’ll need to add to my ’30s stash first because I’ve pretty much exhausted it.

At this point I think I’m about two weeks away from finishing the piecing of the Pickled Ladies border. Oh, how I wish I’d done more of the blocks for this as I was adding the half pickled clams because I just cannot wait to finish it.

So some machine piecing and some hand piecing is in my future, adding borders to these tops. But the one thing that stands out to me from writing this is how much I want to be starting something new! Maybe some new sunflowers will be all that’s needed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I get started on a new quilt either. But the borders have to get done for all these tops first.

“Margaritaville”

Jake actually seemed content to pose for a close-up yesterday.

Mr. Q.O. caught Baxter mid-yawn the other night. Just looking at this makes me laugh.