In Which Lynne Discovers Nirvana

I liked the Parade of Zebras quilt, but I wasn't in love with it. There was something wrong with it. I didn't know quite what.

I thought I'd put a border on it, so I rummaged through my still-not-organized stash to see what I might have enough of. The two black and whites on the right were an option, but no. The one on the top was circles and that just didn't seem right, since the quilt was stripes. And the one on the bottom was just... no. The quilt needed a darker border, not a light one.

As I sat in my chair looking at the quilt, I looked around the floor at the fabric I had stacked there. In the pile was this wild digital print I had bought last summer. I thought, what the hell.

So I stuck it up on the wall next to the quilt and stood back. I wasn't quite sure when I looked at the picture in the camera, but when I looked at the QUILT I knew it was perfect. It had a lot of the same colors, and it just felt right. Immediately I took it off the wall, ironed it and cut strips, sewed them together into one long strip and then started sewing it to the quilt itself.

I sewed it to one side of the quilt, cut the strip, ironed it, then turned the corner and sewed the strip to the next side, and kept going the whole way around. As soon as I ironed the first strip I knew it was a winner.

As I was sewing it to the quilt, I remembered something my son said to me once, "You know what I like about you Mom? When you go over the top, you keep going."

Now the whole quilt seems to fit together. There is a lot of purple in the quilt, and there is a lot of purple in the border fabric. In fact, the border has all the colors of the quilt in it. And the dark keeps the lighter stripes from running off the edges.

It looks good here, but it's ten times better in real life. I absolutely LOVE this quilt now.

Now I can also resume cleaning and organizing the stash.