I finally put the borders on this little quilt. It's had a chequered career, and nearly ended up in the bin on more than one occasion. When I'd pieced it together the first time I discovered about half the blocks had discoloured, and I had to replace them. The stars were hand pieced, and I was unwilling to waste all that work so I think this was the only thing that saved them in the end.

(By the way, that's a shadow down the bottom, not another stain)

I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted the top to look like, and I searched for the right border fabric for quite a while. This is Flag Day Farm by Minick and Simpson and I love it.

The pattern was so large that I didn't want those big floral sprays to be cut haphazardly in case the border looked unbalanced.  I carefully measured and matched the pattern and cut  so that the motifs  were in the centre of each strip. I wasted a little bit of fabric, but I was able to space the pattern around the borders so that it looked balanced. After all the trouble I'd already taken unpicking and making replacement blocks, I wasn't going to skimp on the final task. And of course the leftover fabric isn't really wasted because it will just go into the scrap stash and be used in other quilts.....

I thought I remembered the photo that inspired this top so I went through my books looking for it. I found it in this Gallery of American Quilts, which I haven't looked at in quite a while.

I was surprised to see that my quilt doesn't bear much resemblance to the original at all, apart from the stars and the pink background. That's ok, because I like the way mine turned out, but it's interesting to see how a photo can be just a jumping off point for our own interpretation.