A crazy quilter goes sane.....

Yes, occasionally I do go sane, as I recently did for this quilt which is a wedding present for a nephew and his wife who were married last August. Apparently when I do go sane, I do it very slowly. And I do it in the craziest manner possible. I used no discernible pattern for this quilt; I just got fabrics I thought the bride would like and started cutting and piecing. I'd been told she favored strong black and white prints, and I found one that is a leafy vine print, one that is floral, and one that is small butterflies. I left them in large squares, mixing them around row by row, and sashing them with a bit of very black, almost velvety, mole cloth and red setting squares. Then a border of a fourth black and white print, a border of red, and then a type of border that I may have invented (but probably not). I cut a certain width of strips (in this case, 4" wide) of whatever fabrics I have leftover from the main body of the quilt, and just hack them into different lengths, then start sewing them into long strips to make a border. I've found it a good way to get the quilt to grow to be the size I want it to be. I could have done a border like this, then done another solid black or red border, then another border of the crazy strips, etc., until the top is the size I'm shooting for. I didn't have an exact size in mind when I began this, just thinking of something that could be folded at the foot of the bed or over the back of the couch. It came out to 61"x76", just the right size for newlyweds to snuggle under while watching a movie. Snuggling being a much under-appreciated past time, in my opinion....