Maggie is All Danced Out and Heading Home

When Jacquelynne asked if I would be a sponsor for this BOM project, I answered that I'd be thrilled to send prizes (which I did, in month 3)

Remember that?

 but that I really wasn't sure I could commit to being an actual blogging sewer. She convinced me otherwise and I'm so glad she did. I work best on deadlines, and I love having a little project on the side that is just for fun. This filled both slots for me, and to top it off everyone who has been lucky enough to enter the morass of my quilt studio in the last few months has exclaimed over it on my design wall. Even my 13 year olds.That is saying something, people. So thank you, Jacquelynne, for this lovely experience!

And thank you, readers, for showing up to see how I'm going to scrap up the quilt every month. Those of you who know me know I love to get a little crazy with a border. Emphasis on "little;" I'm not saying I go all nutso and avant garde and asymmetrical and artsy, but I do go rogue and change them up most of the time, generally adding a little piecing to long plain borders. Is there anything wrong with long plain borders? No. So why do I do this? 1. My scrappy heart demands it. 2. My limited supply of yardage demands it. Being a scrappy designer means the most I ever buy of most fabrics, even if I really really love them, is a half yard. Long borders generally don't work with half yards.

Sure, I could go buy more fabric. But that would mean I had started these borders in time to do so. Deadlines. I love them, I work well with them, but I like to test my sanity.

So that's what I came up with for borders to round out my scrappy version of Maggie. Let's see how I changed it up a bit from the original version.

Darn but I do love a good recolorization. Look at how different they look! I do love how the red triangles in the original evoke for me a feeling of an old photo album, which goes along with the old fashioned feel of Jacquelynne's version. So cool.

For my version, I didn't change anything about the construction of the first two borders. All I did was  recolor them. Instead of doing all the corner HSTs in grey with red, I did one each of grey with each color in my scheme of green, yellow, blue, and purple. Then instead of the long white borders, I chose to add long colored borders, again in the same color scheme. Placing the HST and long borders of the same color together on one end at each corner kind of blends it all together and makes it look like a ribbon changing color as it goes around the blocks.

Or not. That's what I'm seeing, you may see just some colored lines. Quilting, man. It's all in the eye of the beholder. But that's what I did for the first border.

The second border, the thin grey border. I left the same. I tend to have a lot of grey in my stash, because I use it as backgrounds. So I had enough to work with for that border.

The third border demanded I either go to the fabric store, which as we covered earlier wasn't happening for lack of time, or come up with a pieced border that would look like it belonged. As I'm better at doing the latter than spending time and money at crunch time, I dove back into the scrap bins to find two fabrics each in....say it with me now....green, yellow, blue, and purple! I think I may have you trained.

Made 16 HSTs out of my scraps and background, and turned one set of each color (if you don't know by now the colors, there is no hope for you) into a flying goose 4 1/2" x 8 1/2".

At risk of boring you to tears with this same picture AGAIN, I'm throwing it here one last time so that you can follow along without having to scroll up to look. I'm thinking of you. Really I am.

Also props to my neighbors Julie and Scott for giving me carte blanche to use their fence as a backdrop for photos.

Then I cut eight strips of background fabric 4 1/2" x 14 1/2" and sewed one to either end of the flying goose units. I sewed an HST to either end of these borders - check out the top border with the purple flying goose. It has a blue HST on the left and a yellow HST on the right. Then I could just add two of these borders to the sides, and throw grey cornerstones on the remaining two borders and smack them right onto the top and bottom.

"Smack." It's a quilting term.

Now, remember my purple situation with one of my blocks? Yeah, I'm over it. Yes, I still know which one it is. But at first glance, I doubt you do. And if you do, don't tell me. Moral of story - anything can blend if you throw enough variety of fabrics at it to deflect the viewer's eye.

I really enjoyed this project and I actually plan to finish it! Really I do! I think it will be a great springtime quilt to hang in my front hall, where I tend to put my seasonal ones. That means I have about 4 months to finish it, and I think I can squeeze it in.

Our prize today is one that I LOVE. I mean, LOVE beyond all reason love and use always and think the inventor is brilliant LOVE. The Clearly Perfect Angles by New Leaf Stitches.

If you have never experienced the sheer ecstasy of the CPA (and I'm not talking about your accountant), you NEED TO. You just do. I have forever thought that the most primitive method we quilters are still using in our work is drawing the $^&*$# corner to corner lines on squares that we are going to make into HSTs or flying geese or whatever. I mean OMG. It's the 21st century. We can do better. And you know what - Kari Carr DID! She invented this gizmo; it adheres to your machine with all sorts of cool guidelines so that you can always have a perfect 1/4" seam, always know where to place your block for sewing corner to corner or 1/4" away from corner to corner, can make 45 degree angles for foundation piecing or geese effortlessly, can join binding strips without fear of wonk (another quilting term)....I mean the list is long, people. It's the best $11 you can spend. I love it so much I'm going to be demo-ing it when I head to Tannersville PA next weekend to be the speaker at "Quilters Day Out" sponsored by Mountain Laurel Quilters' Guild. And I don't just demo anything, you know. I have to love it so much that I gush my face off. It makes for much more entertaining demo.

To enter the CPA giveaway, please comment below answering the following questions:

1. Have you been plugging along on Maggie's First Dance, and if so, how far have you gotten?
2. Favorite book you read recently. I know this has nothing to do with Maggie, but I read audible books while I quilt and I desperately need some new ideas.

I've really enjoyed getting to know so many of you over the last six months. I'm definitely going to miss our little monthly Monday morning chats. If you will too, please consider following me on my Facebook page, on IG (@evapaigequilts), or signing up for my newsletter. Any one of these places is a great way to be among the first to see where I'm going to be live and gushing about my favorite products, or to find out about cool projects I'm doing, like the Jingle Jumble Mini Mystery I have going right now. We're on week 3 today, but you can hop in at any time through 11/28 - and it's a "Mini" mystery, so you'll more than likely catch up quickly!

Thanks for sharing this time with me! I've enjoyed it! Hope to see you again soon!