Quilts for Kids

A Quilts for Kids kit that took twice as long as it should have!  First time I had used one of their kits--all precut: the squares for the pin wheels, the borders, the backing.  No binding fabric, I don't know if that is standard or not, but that was the least of my problems.

The pin wheels went smooth, the first electric green border went smooth with only 2.75 inches extra.  The second blue border should be 3.5 inches wide and match the blue triangles in the pin wheels.  However, it was 8 inches too short to go all around the quilt.  Hmmm....

Then I measured the back.  It was a single width of fabric--45" with selvages.  The quilt top at this point, when finished, would measure 47 inches wide.  Hmm....  Lengthwise, the backing was only 4 inches extra.  I very briefly considered cutting down the top . . .but I had just matched all those seams and I really liked that pop of electric green.  I thought it needed to stay.

Most of you would just rummage through your stash and come up with a substitute for the border.  I very briefly thought about that also and I even went to my fabric closet to confirm that I don't have anything remotely close to these colors in my fabric stash.

So, I did what folks do when they live out on the farm 60 miles from the closest fabric store.  I cut up the too-small back and used strips from it to make a narrower (2.5") second border and then pieced the back with the original border that was  8" too short.

Now, the back was just barely bigger than the top.  To quilt this, I had to baste 3" strips torn from old sheets to the backing to give me enough backing to pin on the quilt frame.

 I think it was a good save.

I had to run in to town Tuesday for parts for the farm and stopped by the fabric store for the checkered binding.  I put that on today because I want to get this in the mail when I go back to the post office on Friday. With fuel prices, gone are the days when I jet into town whenever....  

Oh, one more really funny little detail: when I finished the quilt, I had about 8 inches left of the too short border that caused all the problems in the first place~!