My July POM: When Unfinished Is Okay

While I didn’t finish my novelty log cabin quilt in July, I did try. In addition to repairing all the damage I’d accidentally done to it, I needed to make it bigger so it would fit our king-sized bed. That meant adding borders to the top, and more fabric to the back. Simple enough. Only it wasn’t.

My goal was to use fabric that I already had. My quilting stash fills fourteen drawers and I’m trying hard to use it up. To do a border out of a single fabric was going to take at least 2.5 yards of something. Because I prefer scrappy quilts, the majority of my fabric is half-yard and quarter-yard cuts.

I do have over two yards of a bird fabric that I bought a few years ago that could work. The design included realistic red, yellow, and blue birds on a white background. The colors harmonized with my quilt top and I loved the design. I just needed a dark inner border to set it off.

I had long scraps of a black-and-white zebra batik that I had used as backing on another quilt, so I made them into a narrow border. I auditioned my bird fabric with the top and took some photos, but it wasn’t until I getting ready to cut it that I realized I really didn’t want to use this fabric.

While a novelty fabric border was thematically appropriate, it just added to the chaos. From a distance, the beautiful birds were mere spots making an odd pattern. Fixing that would require a lot of fussing and extra fabric I didn’t have.

I gave myself permission to buy some fabric and headed to my local quilt store. On my way there, I worried. I’d been re-watching Karen Brown’s Afterquilt videos in preparation for adding to my pieced back, and something she stressed was haunting me: you need a really flat backing fabric as a foundation, especially if your top isn’t all that flat.

My quilt top is hilly.

I wound up buying two things at the store: a subtly textured black fabric to use for the border, and 3.5 yards of 108” wide backing fabric. The first was the best thing I could find to help the quilt look good — a clearly defined frame that wouldn’t distract from the log cabin pattern. The second would reduce the amount of struggle involved in the actual quilting of this poor, abused quilt top. It would also save me sewing time as I would no longer need to piece small bits together to use on the back.

I had washed and pressed the new fabric and even cut the borders when suddenly July was over. I briefly considered extending my deadline into August, but it’s just too hot. This top needs lots of pressing before I can baste it, and stooping over a scorching iron has no appeal. So I’m setting this project aside for now.

While it isn’t finished, I’m actually pretty pleased with the progress I made on my July POM. The big decisions have been made and I have all the supplies in hand. All that’s left to do is to mindless in comparison.

I will get back to this project in the fall, when the weather is cooler and I can stand the thought of turning on the iron. In the meantime, I’ve moved on to my August POM. I’m working on a new miniature, and I’m really excited about it. Look for more details next week.