Soupcon trunk show and a finishing idea

Spring is coming and the cardinals are courting! This guy was sitting on top of the wisteria, surveying his territory. Normally the moment I point a camera in the direction of a cardinal it will take off lickity-split! Not this guy - he was quite content to be admired! Mind you I was some distance away and using a zoom. He kept an eye on me the whole time but didn't seem overly concerned. His colour spectacular so I think he was quite happy to be admired! He perches in the same spot every evening around 7:00.

So how about a mini Soupcon trunk show? Yes? Well here we go!

Mary has a beautiful large floral print which was used in a previous step. She decided to repeat this fabric in place of the appliqued border and I think she made a great choice! I said it before and I'll say it again: it reminds me of a movie theatre stage with the lovely, heavy, velvet curtains. Mary has been making the little hexagon flowers to be appliqued (you can see them one the left) but I think the quilt is  fabulous as is!  You may not know that Mary has some great tutorials on her blog. Yesterday shew wrote about fussy cutting diamonds and you can read about it here.

Sheila is the first to finish her Soupcon quilt! She added the 1 1/2" border and repeated this fabric for the little spikes in the pieced outer border. The effect is so elegant! I love the scrappy red thimbles - heck I love everything about this one! This is a four season quilt. I can see it being used in the summer but also during the Christmas holidays.

Heather the Happy Appliquer is the second to complete her Soupcon! What a lovely fresh-looking quilt she has made. Heather too has added her own person touches including the narrow outer border and the fussy cut hexagon flowers in the middle border. I also like that she has the blue spikes radiating out! Absolutely lovely!

I haven't forgotten that I promised to give you some ideas for making Soupcon larger. Here is one suggestion for another border. I love hourglass blocks, especially if they are scrappy. I used 2" hourglass blocks as a border on my Piccadilly to the Nines quilt. You could use any block you chose and any size you want but today I'll talk about 2" finished hourglass blocks.

The first step is to determine the measurement of your quilt without seam allowances and the measurement of your block without seam allowances.  My quilt measures 31 1/2". I want to use 2" hourglass blocks. To make them fit I'll have to add a border and that border mus be divisible by the size of the hourglass blocks. If my quilt were 34" it would be divisible by 2 so that means I would need to add narrow borders to my quilt to bring it up to 34". If I subtract the size of my quilt from the desired size (34" - 31 1/2") the difference is 2 1/2". That means I would need a finished border of 1 1/4" on each side. Since all of these measurements exclude seam allowances the strips I would cut for the border are 1 3/4". I would cut four strips that measure 1 3/4" by 34 1/2" and attach them to the quilt. The corners would be mitered. This is a great place to use a directional print. You could add a single row of hourglass blocks or you could add multiple rows! I've placed my blue Soupcon on Piccadilly to the Nines to give you and idea. The colours are wrong but you can see that this would be a great way to add a border.

If you wanted to use 3" hourglass blocks, eleven of them would measure 33". If you subtract the measure of Soupcon from the desired size the difference is 1 1/2". This means you would add a narrow 3/4" border (1 1/4" with seam allowances). If you want a weightier border then the next size up would be 36" (finished). The difference between this measurement and the Soupcon measurement (36" - 31 1/2") is 4 1/2" so your borders would have to measure 2 1/4" (2 3/4" with seam allowances). You would cut four border strips that are 2 3/4" by 36 1/2".

One of the blogs I really enjoy is Every Stitch. Hilda is very talented and one of her quilts that I love (truth be told I love them all)  is Simon. It is a medallion quilt entirely surrounded by hourglass blocks. You can see the finished quilt here. It would be a great finish for Soupcon. Alternatively you could use perhaps three rows of hourglass blocks (I like odd numbers) as a border and then add another border of a different block. I'll share more ideas in the near future but in the meanwhile do some snooping around Hilda's blog - just make sure you have a nice hot cuppa and time to look around and be inspired! You won't be disappointed!

Time for me to get back to quilting my Lazy Girl! Until I post again, happy sewing!
Karen H