Tied up at the Border

You all know that I’ve been trying to tackle my Talkin’ Turkey quilt.  It’s a Bonnie Hunter quilt from her book String Fling.  I carved out a few hours over the weekend to try to get the thing finished….and then I abruptly got stopped on the border.

First off I’m making mine bigger than the original in the book.  Bonnie features a 5 x 6 setting.  I was going with a 6 x 6 setting.  I had the borders sewn together just not attached to the quilt so I didn’t think sewing them on would take too much time.  WRONG.

The quilt has 4 borders.  When I started in I already had the first border on.  So next border.  I got two sides on and then realized I needed to enlarge the remaining two side borders.  I didn’t have enough units so back to making flying geese.  I figured the outer-outer border would be short a few geese so I made more for that one too.  I got the borders to size and something about it just didn’t seem right.  It didn’t come together like I thought it should.  UGH.  Oh well, I thought that’s the problem with enlarging quilts with advanced borders…deal with it…my enlarging would likely not make it work like the original.

So then onto the piano border.  I had the borders done but not the corner fake mitered pieces.  I got them made and put together then attached the borders….all was going well but I ate up a lot of time.  That was okay.  I could still finish this tonight.  So badly I wanted this finished.  But NOPE.

I ran into more trouble.  I tried to figure why my borders didn’t look like the ones in the book.  I looked and hunted and still couldn’t get it figured out.  Then I realized this….

This is Bonnie’s quilt from the picture in the book.  Notice the center of the geese on the border are red…the “wings” white.

This is the directions at a glance.  The center is white…the wings are red.

Notice the diagram for the borders…the centers are red and the “wings” are white.

Notice the finishing diagram.  The centers are red and the “wings” are white.

Nowhere did the directions say that the centers for the border were suppose to be red in the border geese.  Now I understand.  I AM NOT CRAZY…I was not crazy.  I had looked and looked and figured and figured.  Finally I figured it out.

The happy news….In the end the construction of the quilt changes little.  The look of the quilt changes little.  The corners end up a little bit different but not something that is problematic.  It’s VERY superficial….

By the time I figured this all out, it was late and I missed my intended bedtime.  So the borders didn’t all get on.  I am hopeful that tonight I’ll finish the borders in time for my UFO progress post on Wednesday morning.  Fingers crossed for me that I don’t end up with another snafu.

I did check Bonnie’s website.

Here’s the words directly from Bonnie’s site on the correction page:  “Talkin’ Turkey Page 69:

The flying geese method shown will make FOUR geese units, not 2, so less cutting is needed.
Please note that the border diagram on page 73 and the photo on page 68 show the units colored the opposite of the geese units in the block, so you will need 216 units with RED large triangles and NEUTRAL corners to complete the border as shown.
If you have already pieced your geese with larger neutral triangles and small red wing triangles, never fear –sew them end to end –and it will just be your reds that have the seams in them instead of the neutral ones. It will not alter the quilt greatly at all.”

Well there you have it.  Kelli and I have written patterns and know how easy this is to do.  I am going to go back to the corrections page and make sure I have the other corrections noted in my books.  It might save me one night from thinking I’m crazy!!