Debby Kratovil's Technique Tuesday: Using a Border Stripe

It's Technique Tuesday! Debby Kratovil from Debby Kratovil Quilts is here today to show us an idea for using the border stripe from Ann Lauer's Midnight Poppies collection. (Hint: it's a great focal sashing strip!) 

Here's Debby!

Lovely, lovely fabrics: Midnight Poppies. 

When Benartex invited me to design with them, I was sure I could come up with something. I was concentrating on that large border print. There is a black stripe on either side of it (shown in second picture) and I thought I could use one of my rulers to slice it up.

My approach is always simple: Make the fabric do all the work! I'll walk you through my design process.

When the fabrics arrived I was back to square one because my original plan wasn't going to work. Here are the fabrics I chose. I ended up not using the large poppy green and purple floral on the right. This will be incorporated on the back of the quilt.

Midnight Poppies with a selection of 7 coordinates

OK, Debby. Now what?

I always consult my own patterns and designs and figure out a way to rework them. Oh, yes. And I consult the "voices in my head" to see what vibes they are getting from the voices from the fabric. This is true; I'm not making this up! 

Here is my second plan, but I didn't have enough fabric of each print to get an even number of squares for symmetry. Dang! But I did know that I wanted to cut the four sections of border print and use them as vertical and horizontal sashings!

Midnight Poppies Draft 2

So, here is what I did - Plan 3! This is just the concept--I tweaked the design a bit, and you will see that scale of the prints makes the actual quilt turn out differently.

Midnight Poppies Off Center Log Cabin

First the steps:
1. Cut four 8-1/2" squares of 622-60 White Floral and one 8-3/4" square (for center unit).
2. Cut 3-1/2" strips of supporting fabrics to begin building my Off Center Log Cabin blocks (4 of them)
3. Row 1: One (5427-44 Green) 3-1/2" x 8-1/2" and one green 3-1/2" x 11-1/2" strip. Stitch as shown.

Start of Off Center Log Cabin

4. Continue adding strips, cutting for EACH block, the following:

• Row 2 (5425-40 Sage Green): One 3-1/2" x 11-1/2" and one 3-1/2" x 14-1/2"
• Row 3 (5424-44 Mosaic Petals Green/Purple): One 3-1/2" x 14-1/2" and one 3-1/2" x 17-1/2"
• Row 4 (5425-09 Daisy Petals White): One 3-1/2" x 17-1/2" and one 3-1/2" x 20-1/2"
• Row 5 - I was short on fabric and so used two: One 3-1/2" x 20-1/2" strip 5427-44 Green and one 3-1/2" x 23-1/2" strip 5426-50 (Criss Cross Dot Blue/Green)

Here's one block:

One Off Center Log Cabin: 23-1/2" x 23-1/2"

5. Make two blocks and join with a trimmed border strip (measures 8-3/4" wide including seam allowances). Here is the trimming of the border print. I allowed the LENGTH of 29" to stay until the very end.

Trim each side of the border print, allowing for 1/4" seams

6. Two blocks joined:

Two blocks joined and then border print trimmed to 23-1/2" to match the blocks.

7. Make two more blocks, but be careful of where you stitch the strips. Uh oh!

My Uh, Oh Block. Gotta remove that renegade white strip!

8. Add the 8-3/4" floral square to two remaining border strips:

Add center square to remaining two border strips

9. Join blocks and wide sashing strips; measure and trim the sashings at the very end.

10. Here is my 54" x 54" quilt top hanging in the breeze on my deck after a summer rain!

Midnight Poppies Off Center Log Cabin: 54" x 54"

Follow the cutting instructions as listed above. Here is the supply list for making the quilt as shown here. Backing and batting needs to be at least 3-4" larger around all sides for quilting.

Thanks, Debby, for showing us a great idea for using Ann's border stripe and those gorgeous poppy prints!

Click here to see Ann's entire Midnight Poppies collection.