A finished quilt top!

On the design wall today is a finished quilt top! This is the summer mystery project my local guild offered it's members.

Here is the quilt top before borders. Because the chain is the lightest fabric, it became dominant in my version of the design and you don't see the circular effect that can be seen in other quilts using the  "peaky and spike" blocks (as coined by Doreen Speckmann for those of you who are long time quilters).

I auditioned a lot of fabrics for borders, but nothing made me happy. Then the idea came to me to extend the diagonal white squares into one more border. I don't know why the idea appealed to me so much, but I happily sewed these strips to add. Even though each one is a different length, they were correct the way I sewed it together. I really was in my happy place sewing these border strips. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but didn't seem to care!

And here is the finished product. It's the perfect size to finish as a donation quilt and I'm already getting ideas for machine quilting.

It was great fun to sew along on a  summer mystery with my quilting friends!

Linking up to Design Wall Monday