As you can see, My Little Neighbor (MLN) is back at work on her first quilt, a colorful 9-patch, and she’s pretty excited about it. She started this quilt last year as a hand-sewing project to keep her occupied while sidelined with a broken foot.

Earlier this summer she came over with most of her 9-patches sewn together, and we discussed setting options. MLN would like her quilt to be a good-sized throw so the idea of adding sashing between the blocks appealed to her. We had a discussion about value, and she auditioned several fabrics from my stash, looking for a sashing fabric that would complement the blocks but not compete with them:

MLN narrowed the candidates down to a medium-light green and a medium-light blue:

And the clear winner — blue:

Fast forward a few weeks to early August, when my two youngest granddaughters, Bonnie and Beatrice, were visiting from San Francisco. All the girls made four-patch coasters — you can see Bea’s and MLN’s here — using my sewing machine. At that point MLN decided she would rather finish her quilt by machine than by hand. What a good idea! We couldn’t think of one good reason to finish it by hand — and a lot of good reasons to finish it by machine.

In the photo at the top of this post, MLN had already added the sashes by machine. Next came the border strips, out of the same blue fabric scattered with tiny white polka dots. She determined she would like another border, to make the quilt larger and to add visual interest. We were thinking of something in red when she spotted this fabric in my stash:

We both think it’s the perfect choice. She is in the process of adding the final borders. Please stop by tomorrow for the Big Reveal!