Checkered Flag Coming Up on Checkered Hearts

Ladies and gentlemen....we have progress!

Hit the studio bright and early this morning to finish up the heart blocks.

 Fired up the iron (on the sewing armoire, as the cutting table was needed to cut today).

But, we did finish the top. Woo hoo!

The lame instructions were even lamer when it came to setting inner borders, so I had to wing it, and I winged it to use less around the actual hearts than was pictured on the pattern, and I still ran out of muslin and didn't have enough for the checkerboard border. Fortunately I have about 8 shades of muslin in my stash and was able to find something that was close enough to use.

And good thing I didn't use as much inner border as pictured on the pattern because then I would have run out of the outer border fabric. (We won't be buying patterns and kits from this shop in the future!)

Well, on the bright side, it has been a learning experience, and we're going to try real hard to ignore the fact that I took it upon myself to square up the hearts and in so doing clipped the tip off of one of them.

For the border I pulled out the stash muslin and found a bit of red and a bit of leftover Valentine Moda from last year, so I was able to piece together a backing (it's a table quilt so it's okay).

Tomorrow I hope to get it sandwiched, quilted and scallop the edges (oooh....another cruise into uncharted seas for me).

For a minute there I was thinking of passing the pattern and some of the leftover fabrics on to you in the January Follower Appreciation giveaway, but I'm not sure I'd wish the pain this has been on anyone else. :)

If you've got tomorrow off, please, do something fun. As for me, let's see if I can curb the procrastination and get Fiesta cut and started.