Maths, inside out

 Oof-dah! as my Norwegian ancestors would say. What a brain-bending day!

The initial step was easy: starch those bias edges of the outer border into submission, and go from there. So that's how I started the day: with the outer border, an iron, and a can of spray starch.

It's been very educational seeing all the 4-patch blocks from the back, up close and personal. It's let me know how carefully I need to treat each block, and how important the future quilting will be in holding the whole thing together!

I kept finding markers along the way--two safety pins and an address label.

I hope whatever egregious problem these were marking makes itself known as I work on this, because I have no idea why they were pinned/stuck where they were!

The 4-patches are made of mostly 2" squares (some are larger), but the seams holding them together or sewing them to their triangles range from 1/4" to 1/16", hand- and/or machine-stitched.

I got everything starched and stabilized, squoze down to the size I thought it was destined to be, and hung up on the design wall.

Then came the "fun". I took the measurements of the outer light green border. I took the measurements of the inner raw seams. I compared the two. I tried to figure out an inner border. I tried to figure out how to equalize the outer border. I tried to figure out how to make up the 1-1/4" difference in lengths between the longest and shortest sides.

There were too many numbers.

More than once (3 or 4 times!) I looked at the existing border and wondered if it would be easiest to strip everything down, take a proper 1/4" seam, and reconstruct the 4-patch border. These are supposed to be 3" 4-patches (made from 2" squares).

This is where a 1/16" seam makes a huge difference from a 1/4" seam. My mother may have been meticulous in her planning, but that's where it ended!

But no. The fact that I didn't immediately jump up, start cutting out 2" squares, and churn out correctly-sized 4-patches from the extra fabric, or start deconstructing that which was sitting right in front of me let me know that I wasn't really invested in the idea of making it all over from scratch. If I had done that, all the other outer borders would need to be resized as well, and the green vine re-planned and basted down. It would mean my mother's hand in it all would be erased. I really wanted her pieces to dictate the final construction of this project.

There was much mental back-and-forthing going on, but in the end I decided to leave the outer border (the light green) as it was, and take a look at what I could do to equalize the inner measurements to 37-5/8" (the length of two of the edges). I needed to get something square so I could insert the middle (square!) medallion with a minimum of fuss. Trying to make up a 1-1/4" difference in sides is a LOT harder than making up an eighth inch, and far more obvious!

The longest side measurement was 38-3/8". Could I perhaps make a couple of tucks in the corners? Do more easing in of the bias edge to shorten that side by 3/4" somehow? The shortest measurement was 37-1/8". Could I take a closer look at the side seam allowances I was measuring from? Do a bit of gentle stretching of that bias edge to extend that measurement by 1/2"?

As it turned out: "yes" to both questions! A tweak or two here, a trim or two there, and I could get all four sides to measure 37-5/8". It's a start!

To "The Drawer"! It's where I keep all The Stuff. In it are several rolls of 1/8" ribbon that I bought decades ago, for the sole purpose of stabilizing edges before applying binding. I've stopped doing that years ago, but there's still scads of ribbon left, waiting for an opportunity such as this.

Four lengths of 37-5/8" cut and ready to be pinned to those pesky bias edges!

Easy-peasy, right? Pin the center of the ribbon to the top of the middle 4-patch, anchor the ends, pin down the two quarter points (the middle-middle spots), and go from there.

Except....

Funny thing about assumptions. Assumption (wrong) #1: the middle of the middle 4-patch will be the middle of the border. Sometimes yes:

 

 

sometimes no:

The middle of the left 4-patch was supposedly the center of this side! The pin marks the real truth.

Assumption (WRONG!) #2: the middle of the middle-middle 4-patch will be the quarter mark of the border. I just wasn't paying attention to how the 4-patch diamonds were situated along the whole border. Operator Headspace! There were 3-1/2 diamonds from the edge to the center of the border, not four, so of course the quarter marks would have to land at the 1-3/4 diamond spot.

Once I determined the center and quarter markings for each side (by doing it properly and folding the border in half and quarters), things went much smoother. Without much hullabaloo the ribbon was sewn to all four bias-heavy sides, stabilizing them and making them all 37-5/8" in length.

Early in the construction of this quilt, my mother had a change in plans and reduced the outer green border from 1" to 1/4" (finished). Rather than cut anything down, she simply drew a new line and sewed on that. I took a few minutes to trim all that excess off (not only was it superfluous fabric, it could be seen from the front).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That left me with one piece wide and long enough to be trimmed down to 3/4" x 37-5/8", perfect for one of the inner sides, and there was plenty of the "fresh" green fabric from which to cut the borders for the remaining inner edges of the diamonds.

New inner green border on, and no more green shadow around the outer green border.

I knew from the sketching I had done that there was going to be excess at each corner, but trying to figure out how to plan/cut for that was beyond anything I could easily handle. Applying borders from the outside in, instead of calculating how much to add as one builds from the middle out, is brain-bending work! (The Loud: "Too bad there isn't something that's the opposite of addition you could use.") For a finished border of 1/4", I wasn't going to worry about it too much. I acknowledged the inevitable by not double-stitching any of the ends, so I could easily pick out and trim back as necessary once everything was ironed down.

Yep, there's overage. I'll deal with it tomorrow!

The final piece of the plan (such as it is)

is to add a green 1/4" border around the center medallion (I had forgotten that until just now--all that inside-out math shoved that little detail right out) and then audition the red fabrics to fill the gap that remains.

And hope I can get the maths right.