Working out of the winter doldrums

—they hit every January. 

I was a bit under the weather this past week—nothing serious, just allergy-related—and I mentioned in my last post the desire to hibernate. Something popped up in my Facebook feed Sunday morning that said we had just survived the 10 darkest weeks of the year—an “Aha” moment, to be sure. I decided that moment that I felt well enough to tackle the binding on the Tattoo quilt.

While a lot of the tattoo quilt I’m making mimics the Tula Pink version, I made a decision (with assistance from dear friends) while sashing the blocks and center panel that there would be no border. While I really like borderless quilts, I loved Tula’s border with all of her stripes. 

It reminded me a little of a circus and that’s what took hold in my brain. So the stripe fabric now becomes the binding.

I don’t have every stripe from her collection, but I have a dozen of them; all fat quarters. I cut two strips from each and set about matching the stripes together. It took me maybe a couple of hours Sunday afternoon to do it and I enjoyed the fussiness of it. I’m very happy with the result:

If you’re interested in stripe matching, this is the YouTube video I reviewed: How to Match Striped Quilt Binding (2-Minute Tutorial)

I have determined what I want to put on the label, and I’m digitizing it now to spit it out on my Luminaire. I’m going to Katrina’s to quilt it in 9 days—I told the Hubs last night that I could be coming home with a finished quilt…HAH!

BTW, I was thinking about what to do with the leftover pieces of the stripe fabrics, since I used a small portion of what I had intended. This Lone Star quilt made by Ben Darby was on view at the Road to California quilt show held this past weekend:

Photo by Elizabeth Eastmond, OPQuilt.com

I think it's a fabulous quilt and I just might tackle a Lone Star with the stripes. You can see several of the exhibited quilts at OPQuilt.com. 

I hope you have a beautiful week full of wonderful things. Go make!