Pink Fairy Quilt Completed and Mailed

The pink fairy quilt was finished a week or so ago and mailed to the tiny little recipient who arrived on December 30.

I added the 1 inch white inner border and the 3 inch outer border of pink, white and brown hearts.  The cpmpleted quilt top measured 42" X 42".   Hmmmm.... not such a good idea since most fabrics are only that wide and in order to have a few extra inches for the quilting, that could be a problem.

I thought a piece of pink flannel might work so I bought a piece of pink tone-on-tone flannel with I thought would be wide enough. After washing it, I discovered it either had shrunk a whole lot, or it really wasn't 44 inches wide to begin with as the saleswoman had told me.  Back to the drawing board!

I had some more heart fabric left, the same as the border, but the piece was only 35 1/2 inches (42 inches wide). I went back to where I had bought it hoping to get a bigger piece but, of course, they didn't have any more!  Dilemma!

I bought some solid pink fabric (same tone as in the quilt top) and decided to make a 3 inch pink solid border around the heart fabric for the back. (No photo unfortunately... :(

I pinned the layers (quilt top, inner batting and pieced back fabric) together and then started quilting it.
I machine quilted 'in the ditch' around the blocks and then all around the inside of the white border.
After that I cut out 3 little cardboard hearts and used them as templates to draw on the outer border with my erasable/ disappearing pen spacing them about 1 1/2 inches apart.

I put my free motion foot on my machine and stitched around the left sides of the hearts joining each one to the next as I went along.  When I finished one side border, I stitched the right sides of the hearts.
It doesn't show up in the photo, but it turned out quite nicely!


Now for the edging, I thought.  I had planned to make a mock edge, but decided instead, (after accidentally knicking the edge of the back fabric with my cutting blade) on a scrappy edge. I had a lot of 2 1/4 inch strips left from the blocks so I sewed them all together in a long long strip, mixing and matching various pieces and then attaching it to the edge of the quilt. It turned out looking really cute (and I wish I would have remembered to take a photo of the edging...)