Possum Magic: Round 3

As the Possum Magic quilts get bigger, I can see it will become trickier to add to them! In the third round, I had to add to Sharon’s quilt.

Each time a new project arrives, I think it is my favourite, and I really like how this scrappy quilt is developing. Sharon (of Motherdragon’s Musings) started with a Dresden-plate centre, in which she used eighty different fabrics and some tiny fussy-cut hexagons.  Jo of Riddle and Whimsy added the print border and loads and loads of tiny triangles, setting the Dresden plate on point and framing it really well. Jo took Sharon’s scrappy plan to heart and deliberately added 140 different fabrics. Then, Serena of Sew Giving added some granny squares, separated by white space, which I think was precisely what was needed to frame what had been done before. My job was not to muck it up!

I knew straightaway that I wanted to continue the traditional scrappy look that Sharon had started. For me, the obvious step was to include more scrappy triangles like Jo’s so the two borders looked related and balanced on either side of Serena’s.

I started sketching.

I scribbled a few ideas on a bit of paper.

Then, I transferred some of my ideas into clearer drawings using Adobe Illustrator.

I asked Serena and Jo for their opinions, and, as always seems to be the case, we all liked different borders for different reasons. In the end, I threw reason out the window, and went with my gut and chose pinwheels.

Because of my neat-freak nature, my scrap box is tidy and small. I started by using any of my pre-cut triangle scraps that were large enough and any scraps that I had not yet cut into small squares, but I soon had to start cutting into my stash. I simply do not have enough scrap! I put in a little bit of most colours, but I avoided brown and black, as I did not see any of those in Sharon’s centre, and I also did not use much of anything too bright or garish that might draw the eye. I wanted the attention to stay focused on the middle.

Pulling all of my stash out of the cupboard and cutting small bits from the fabrics forced me to do a bit of a tidy and sort. My fabric stash is nice and neat at the moment … until I start rummaging about in it again.

My border contains 192 coloured triangles, and I never used the same fabric more than twice. Many are one-offs. Without counting accurately, I am confident that I have added at least a hundred fabrics to the quilt, and that does not include the several white prints I used. Adding together the different fabrics contributed by all four of us, I estimate at least 330 fabrics have been used. The total is probably closer to 340.

I added a border of scrappy pinwheels, made up of 1¾-inch half-square triangles.

The quilt top is now 46 inches square, and it is ready to send to Jane of Where Jane Creates.

What do you think? Did I make the right call with pinwheels? What border would you have chosen? Or, what would you do next if you were Jane?

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