From Scraps... to blocks... to a quilt top.

Back in late October I sent out bundles of some fabric and some grey squares for my month, November, in the Bee Seam Piecing Downunder Bee with the inspiration word 'circles'.

I deliberately didn't provide a particular pattern because I wanted all the bee members to tackle the project with some opportunity to implement their own creativity and to tackle curves seams that make so many people nervous in the way they felt most comfortable. I'm not completely mean so I did provide links to some tutorials and some inspiration blocks.

Soon they started to arrive back, and now Christmas has passed and the summer holidays are a distant memory I thought it was about time they were sewn together in a quilt top and then a quilt.

There are 12 members of the bee but unfortunately 2 blocks were lost in the mail and 2 more have never turned up so I now have 20 blocks instead of the 24 I planned for. No number of calls to the Australia Post Dead Letter Office (like the Bermeuda Triangle of mail apparently) is having much luck with the missing blocks.

In order to make up the difference in quilt size with the limited number of scraps with the coordinating fabric I have I have decided to make scrappy sashing with 2" finished squares between the blocks.

So this week I have been cutting and sewing and cutting and sewing these strips together in sets if five to form the sashing between the blocks with grey posts. I am thinking at this stage that I will also do a grey border and a scrappy binding, I think I have enough of the coloured fabric for that.

Any suggestions for the border fabric? I have this at the moment and would like to add 6" borders I think. At the moment the quilt top measures 50"x60".