Aug-tober is slipping away, and I felt like I’d barely gotten anything done for it. So on the weekend, Burton and I sat down with some graph paper and figured out how we were going to use those pumpkin and cat blocks

First, we had to put all those blocks together with some sashing and corner stones.

That was the easy part! But Burton decided we also needed a pieced border. I love how pieced borders look – but I HATE making them. There’s so much room for error and stretch – I have a heck of a time getting them to fit right.

And…. I let Burton do the math – and Burton sucks at math, so there was a little ripping and recalculating. But, eventually…

We got the borders assembled. Then we held our breath as we sewed them on…

And happily it worked with very minimal fudging. We added another plain border to bring this one out to a respectable 56″ square and called it a day.

Well… I wanted to call it a day, but Burton wasn’t done yet. The colours in this layer cake are a little muted, and very tricky to match – I had nothing in my stash that would work for binding. So Burton has the brilliant idea to do pieced binding with the leftover of the layer cake. (Because a pieced border wasn’t enough…). Well for those that don’t know… a layer cake piece is on;y 10″ long… which mean to get enough to go around the quilt, I needed to cut and sew, 32 more strips.

But – what Burton wants, Burton gets.

Over 300 inches of binding, cut, sewn, and ironed – ready to be put on the quilt whenever I get a chance to get to Mom’s and quilt it… Underneath it is a grey marbled flannel I got for the back.

Now – I’ve got two weekends left, and I want to make at least one more Halloween quilt top – Burton and I better get back to that graph paper.

Bonus content: It’s not only Aug-tober in the sewing studio – the stores are starting to flood with Halloween goodies.

Dave and I went out to run some errands on Monday night and may have lost our minds a little…

Looks like we’re taking the Garden of Bones up a notch this year…