BORDERS for Moda Blockheads

After joining my Moda Blockheads quilt tops, I felt like the scrappy version needed something a little extra and fancy to go with all those prints and prettiness. I thought a border based on flying geese and little squares provided a nice "fringe" to play off the rows and colors.

From computer plan to quilt top, I think it went pretty much as planned. I wanted to follow the dark to light scheme and reflect that in the flying geese and squares. I've changed colors as the rows have changed from blue to green to orange and so on. 

The flying geese on the sides are in pairs with the same sashing width between pairs. Along the bottom, as the blocks are side by side with no sashing separation going across, so are the flying geese. 

My blocks were the 8" size. Therefore my flying geese are 2 x 4 finished size. The spaces between the 1" finished squares are 3 x 1" and with the sashing spaces on sides, those are 1 x 41/2". 4 x 4" squares go in the corners and 2 1/2" borders line the outsides (all finished sizes. Cut sizes are marked on diagram as well).
The flying geese with 1" sashings are added to quilt top first. The bottom and tops have the 4 x 4" added when attaching those. Small squares with background rectangles and outer border are added next.

The fabric I have use for the sashings and borders background color is Modern Background Paper 1581 11 by Zen Chic. It is such a nice low volume background fabric.

I like to see the difference of how the little squares and flying geese look in the darker values vs the lighter shades. 

I also like to see the differences in the scrappy fabric quilt top vs the all-Thatched version. I think the border on one and not the other will help to create differences between the two, as well as different quilting. Another change between the quilts is I used piecing for most of the applique blocks on the all-Thatched version. The scrappy quilt used the applique designs. Notice the darkest blue and green blocks have the original designs for flowers and birds and birdhouse. The Thatched quilt has pieced blocks from Joanna Figueroa of the tulip, house and posie (which replaces the applique rose that I used Abby Rose fabric for).

Sometimes the fabric choices for scrappy provided a different mix of light and dark so I rearranged some blocks within rows between the two types of quilt tops. The blue row especially flipped positions of some blocks.

I liked adding the little bird in the center of the Fixer Upper block from Vanessa Goertzen. Small peeks of color help to tie the gray blocks in with other rows. 

Time for quilting on these tops. The finish line is in sight! Hope you are having fun with wherever you are in the process!