The Chain Piecer: Thimbleberries top finished and a 'new' WIP

I did make progress on the Thimbleberries WIP blogged about last Wednesday (here) and the top is completed, so I can claim this as a finish and link to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

I laid out all the blocks on the design wall last Saturday and decided that I didn't altogether like the book layout, and that what I really wanted was more sashing.

So after trawling through every box of fabric I possess (which took some time) I found the remains of a much loved and much used tan fabric, which was in fact also made by Thimbleberries (I had forgotten till I checked the selvage).

Double split sashing and cornerstones added, and I am very happy with the result. I like the fact that the dark sashing is broken by the light cornerstones, which themselves are framed by the four coloured squares at the ends of the diagonals.

It's a big quilt so you can't quite see all of the 16 blocks in the photo; each measures 18" and the basic units, the squares and sashing, are all 2" finished. It will look just right on a big bed. No borders required so I hope to straight-line quilt next week.

The other WIP I worked on this week relates back to the Album Quilt I made and blogged about here. As usual, I had fabric left over, and about a dozen nine-patches already made and needing a home. I had been toying with a number of possible settings for some months, and finally decided on an alternate hourglass block (an oldie but a goodie, I hope you'll agree).

I found red and green fabric in the stash, left over from other projects of course, and made the hourglass blocks to fit with the 6" (finished) nine-patches (I had to make a few more).

I trimmed the hourglasses with Marsha McCloskey's Precision Trimmer ruler, which I have had for a long time and not really put to good use before. It is fantastic, because it has the diagonal lines for lining up the x of the hourglass exactly - no need to guess as you would with a regular bias square. I actually enjoyed the trimming!

I joined the blocks and stepped back for a look - it reminded me of nothing so much as a field of crosses; and the red and green hourglasses framing the crosses said 'poppies' to me, though one usually thinks of a rather brighter red for a poppy.

So this is clearly meant to be my Remembrance quilt for 2014, and my aim is to have it finished by November 11th. I hope you don't think this is too morbid - close up you don't really register the crosses and it just looks like a nice, dark, rather masculine quilt.

But it's not finished.

I thought it was, but on reflection I want all my crosses to be framed by red poppies, and that includes the blocks on the outer edges of the quilt, so I need to add a border. The border needs to have red triangles to complete the frame and green strips in between. I suppose these are parallelograms but I worked them out as border strips with 45 degree triangles lopped off.