Midnight Crossing - Inner and Outer Border FMQ

The inner border is 1½" wide in a gray zigzag. I considered a simple wavy line, and previewed it with a clear plastic overly, as shown in the next photo. Often times less is more. But this was too little and I thought the narrow border needed more. I decided to consider what I'd be putting in the outer orange border first and before deciding the narrow gray inner border. The two border designs do need to complement each other after all. The outer border of this quilt is a 3½" wide orange mini-floral. How to quilt it?

I considered a diagonal grid to carry out the "X" theme, but decided it was too prone to being crooked. I considered a scrolling vine with sporadic pumpkins but the required marking spooked me. Then I just stopped and looked at the fabric. In reality it is a stripe. I thought a piano key border aligned with those rows of roses would accentuate the stripe and, although somewhat tedious, would be fairly easy for me to do with a high probability of success. Yes it was more ruler work but it was sure to be textural even if it did not have visual impact. I did complete it all in one day, several hours of careful lines stitched up and down with a ruler as a guide at the same spacing of the rose rows. I used a thread color that matched the background orange.

Back to the inner border. I considered stitching a simple loop design sometimes called traveling vine; I learned this design as Lazy L since my first teacher described stitching it as a cursive capital L. I considered one loop for every border straight line, then a wider spread look with one loop every other border straight line. I started with one pass of Lazy L's. I could always fill in the wider spread with a second pass to make it denser.

After seeing the effect, I ended up doing two passes offset from each other so they formed X's in the center. The X's fit in with the X theme. The quilting barely shows up here, either, like my stitched hearts in the blocks, but with much less effort expended. I am pleased that the double pass holds the inner border with a more evenly distributed texture. These Lazy L's were quick to quilt even though I did two passes.

As my FMQ skills grow, I am becoming braver with the designs I will attempt. Clearly, however, I need to get better at my choices of thread color. I prefer quilting with prints rather than solids, so I think if I want the stitching to show my thread colors need to be bolder. Most tutorials are with solid fabric and contrasting thread. Uh, oh. I have now introduced more analysis paralysis to go with my quilting endeavors. Next post will address my labeling, binding, and completion.