deferring Jane Austen

When last we were working the Jane Austen quilt, I had discovered that (according to my calculations), I was actually going to run out of the chose sashing fabric before I reached the end of the center section.

A trip to my local quilt store lead me to two delightful choices ... but Dear Daughter #2 wasn't with me, so with the shop's permission, I took pictures of them, emailed them to her from my cell phone, called her to let her know she had incoming .... and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Dear Daughter said she never received the pictures.  So, I emailed the same pictures to myself and discovered the same thing.  The internet pipes must have been clogged that day, as the emails never came through.

Once home, I implemented Plan B and manually transferred the pictures from my cell phone to my computer and emailed the pictures to Dear Daughter from my computer.  And awaited her decision.

At home, waiting, I was twiddling my thumbs.  I really, really, really can't stand being idle in the sewing room.  All the leftover diamonds from Jane Austen were staring at me and I decided to fill the time until Dear Daughter said either yay or nay to the sashing selection by "doing something" with some of those diamonds.

Looking at Fig Tree & Company's pattern "Jelly Parfait", I realized that I could use (some) of the diamonds in this layout.  *Perfect*!  I even had some fabric already in my stash that I could use for the setting triangles!

On a Monday, I began to sew the diamonds together to form the triangles for Jelly Parfait.  Four large triangles per row, 6 rows = 4 large triangles.  Each triangle needed 15 diamonds plus 6 setting triangles.  I managed to complete several large triangles by the time Dear Daughter decided that she liked the replacement sashing fabric.   Back to the quilt store to the store to buy it, as they had put it on hold for me.

However, even when I brought the replacement Jane Austen sashing fabric home, I knew .. I *knew* ... that the in-progress Jelly Parfait was going to nag me.  The Jane Austen quilt is going to take a substantial amount of time and I just didn't want to put Jelly Parfait on hiatus for the duration ... because I was concerned (knowing me) that I wouldn't get back to it for a while.

Sooooo ... work continued on Jelly Parfait during the that week until it was done.   By the following Sunday (that is to say, 7 days later), the top was done.  Man, I was happy about that!  It was getting awfully B-O-R-I-N-G sewing those diamonds into a large triangle.  [Which ought to say something about the sashing process for Jane Austen.  I may lose what is left of my mind.]

There are some differences in my rendition of Jelly Parfait from the pattern ... firstly, I used the diamonds I already had.  They are *weird* diamonds, somewhere between 45° and 60° diamonds, so the dimensions of my Jelly Parfait are NOT the same as the pattern. 

I used a linear ribbon stripe for the sashing between rows.  I had saved this absolutely, terminally cute gingham "embroidered" ribbon print fabric for "something" and the sashing between the Jelly Parfait rows was exactly the right circumstance!

I also changed up the border treatment.   I determined that with the addition of a 5" wide border, I could have a queen size quilt.  I wanted to use up as much of the gingham ribbon stripe as I could, so I decided to use it as part of the border.  Alone, it wouldn't have been wide enough.  Fortunately, I had *another* purple ribbon stripe in my stash that I had been saving.  However, the combination of the gingham stripe and the purple ribbon stripe *still* wouldn't be 5".  (In the picture above, the green lines are where I cut the ribbon stripes apart.  The red stripes in the dark purple ribbon stripe doesn't show up in the quilt, since I have incorporated it into the seam allowance ... there was no red any place in the quilt and I thought that having that red show up in the border would look at bit odd.)

Again, fortunately, one of my quilting buddies had traded me some purple Jinny Beyer yardage and it was a perfect companion for the two ribbon stripes!  I put the Jinny Beyer fabric between the two stripes to create the 5" wide border I wanted.  I really like using stripes, either printed or manufactured, for borders since I can then miter the corners.  Striped mitered corners look soooooo nice!  :-)

Now that the top is complete and I finally *looked* at it, I can see that I used a very dark fabric for one of the setting triangles in the pieced triangles.  Hmmm.  Kinda looks out of place with all the others.  Hmmmm.  Too bad .. it's gonna stay.  I don't feel like ripping out the sashing, the 6 setting triangles, re-cutting new ones and putting the replacements back into the quilt.  Tough luck.  (On the other hand ... the one without the warts .. maybe when I pull this top out when it comes time to quilt it, I'll be sufficiently annoyed by those dark little triangles that I'll reconsider replacing them.  Maybe.)


On the other, other hand, this top turned out rather nicely.  It joins the others in the Pile of Tops to be Quilted (someday). :-)

And NOW!!! that all my procrastination activities have been completed, I can return to the real Jane Austen quilt ... remove the small amount of original sashing fabric that has been sewn in the quilt and replace it with the new sashing fabric.  Sash on, sister, sash on!  :-)