Here's Where I'm Heading With This . . .

The other day, I asked you about three potential border fabrics for the Thimbleberries quilt I'm working on, and although the opinions were a bit divided, I think the favorite border--of the ones I showed you--was this one--

I liked the border but even more, I liked the idea of using one of my older, "collected" Thimbleberries fabrics, so I decided I'd use the bells and holly leaves. I also told you I'd give you a little preview of my sashing idea in a day or two. I finally have a little bit of something to show you--at least to give you an idea of where I'm going. I know it's a bit of a mess still because it's all in separate blocks and probably doesn't look very cohesive, but nevertheless . . .

I'm using the sashing to form star blocks at the intersections and then appliqueing bells and holly leaves on the sashing, with the holly leaves facing toward the blocks with the lighter (gold brown) backgrounds. That makes the center block kind of look like it has a wreath going around it. I've only "prepped" half of the bells and leaves, and they're just lightly glued to the background right now. Tomorrow I'm getting together with my stitchery friends for the day, so I hope to get a lot of what's prepped appliqued down. Eventually, I'll also need to go back and add detail to the leaves and bells--the cream vein down the center of the leaves and the criss-cross "opening" to the bells.

At the beginning of the year, when I decided to tackle a Thimbleberries UFO each month, I estimated that most of my unfinished projects would take, at most, a weekend to finish. I guess that was a little unrealistic, or maybe I just get a little carried away sometimes. Here it is, the middle of April and I haven't even come close to finishing this March project and drawing another slip of paper, telling me what the April project is! Well, I can't beat myself up for it, especially if I end up with a quilt I'm happy about, right? I think it's not always about staying on track, just so long as I keep moving forward--and enjoy doing it.

Have a happy weekend of working on whatever project you're enthusiastic about! I'll share updates with you on my project as it comes along.