Being the owner of an online quilt fabric business, I had lots of fabric to use in the auditioning process. Concentrate hanyang on another project. I would ask the machine quilter to quilt a large floral motif, in this section, to accent the Iris in the quilt blocks. The day I delivered this to my daughter, I watched to see if she saw what I saw in the quilt. Next step was to decide the width of the block border. Four fabric shops and an innumerable number of fabrics later the result was still the same: no winner. The icing was now on the cake.

Some weeks later, we got together to examine the blocks.. What am I going to do? My daughter is counting on me and the mother-in-law is calling "often" to find out if the quilt is done. The fabric already had been used in 5 previous quilts which resulted in my stash having a balance of 3 yards, enough for this project. The 2 center rows each had 2 blocks. When your child needs you, what else can you say, but yes. The piece would be 2 rows high and 1 block wide. What about green? Why had I not thought of using green?

So the process began again. The color contrast in the blocks was striking and being involved in piecing this quilt was going to be fun and exciting. As the rows came together, I realized how beautiful the final quilt would be. This fabric had not worked for the border on the blocks but now, as the inner border, it provided the perfect inner frame. He has an artistic background and I at once that he approved. So far, all of my color options had been solids or at least tone on tone fabrics.

Now, over 30 fabrics had been auditioned and I still did not have the right color combination. The blocks were of an Iris pattern. I liked the fabric so much, that I purchased 5 yards of it. The color was perfect and the quilt was alive. Each block registered 18 inches square on a stark white background. poly-linen fabric Realizing, that the border width could also make a difference, each fabric was auditioned by width comparison..