Mr. Bojangles

My sleep cycles have been a little out of kilter and are now just settling down and returning to normal. But when I was enjoying the sunny days of Sunday and most of Monday, I used the wonderful natural light in the living room to finish up the colonial blue binding on Mr. Bojangles.

If you look beyond me, to "Wanda's Friendship Quilt" hanging on the wall, you might be able to make out the Midnight Flight single block pinned onto it from where I was showing it to Felix and Matthew.
Mr. Bojangles is a Civil War reproduction quilt in the pattern of "Twisted Ribbons," or Snowball/ 9-Patch.

What I did differently on this was to make the "snowball" blocks the darker color, and to make all the 9-patches with lights in their corners; just the opposite of the traditional way of making this pattern. I love the secondary pattern that is perfectly visible in the photos but is elusive in person.

I wrestled mightily with quite how to extend the light pattern-play without making the main border all in the lights. Just how wide to make the light inner border stumped me for a month. Finally, I decided to take the finished measurement across the width of the light oblong space BETWEEN two of the snowballs.

That sort of diamond shaped piece was 3 inches wide, finished in the center of the top. Once I had made up my mind, I cut 3 1/2 inch scrappy strips of shirtings for the inner border and held my breath as I put them on, hoping that I would like it.

After I added the wide striped Judie Rothermel "Mill Girls" by Marcus in 6 1/2 inch swaths, I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. I loved it! And I bothered to cut the extra fabric needed to match the stripes on the widths.

I did the quilting myself on Ellen Peters' rented longarm and this was only the second thing I'd ever done on it. At 84 inches square, it seemed HUGE!!! I quilted spirals in antique tan that kinda blends in. That's a good thing, too, for all my flaws in the quilting show less. I found it very challenging to stay rounded and not square off my spirals.

The backing was a wide cream and tan Florentine flannel that I was glad that I prewashed and shrunk in a big laundromat's dryer. It went from 108" down to 105".

All in all, I'm very pleased with Mr. Bojangles!

Happy sewing!