Border Quilt Quilt Along Week 1

Hi friends!

This is week 1 of the Border Quilt Quilt Along. The quilt was designed by Jen Shaffer of patterns by jen. For her quilt, she is using the Enchanted Forest line from Northcott. You can check out her quilt here.

Week 1 is about the center of the quilt. You can either make the center pieced or use a big piece of fabric. maybe a panel? I pieced mine but I had to make some adjustments to make it work for the fabric I had on hand.

Back in this earlier post, I mentioned the fabrics I am using for the Border Quilt. I am using up fat quarters that I have collected over the years and a little bit of yardage where needed.

I started with these fabrics for my center. Love this stack of fabrics. It was hard to cut into them as they looked so pretty!

 

When I opened up this fabric, I found it was a gradation. Very cool. 

 

I decided to stick with the coral part and fussy cut a couple of pieces for 2 sides of the center square. 

 

I debated the center color for a while. I could not decide if I wanted it to be dark or light. In the end (obviously) I went with the darker color. I thought a lighter color might get lost and then center would not be as effective. 

I guess we will see when it is done if I chose correctly!

Then I added the rest of the center until I got to the last round. I could not add long strips to this round as my fabric was only a fat quarter. And since then I would be trimming it down anyway, I figured I could do it another way.

I measured the square thru the center to the size I needed and trimmed. 

 

After cutting the other ends, I was left with a rectangle with it’s corners missing!

 

I figured out what size pieces to cut for the corners and added them. 

 

Then I trimmed the corners to size.

 

Voila! It worked!

My center was done. 

What do you think of the center? Do you like the dark square in the center?

In 2 weeks we will be showing off the next set of borders in our Border Quilt. Be sure to pop back here then.

In the meantime, if you decide you want to play along, pop over to Jen’s website to get the pattern and grab some fabric and get started. It won’t take long to catch up!

happy quilting!

Kate