Borders, borders, and more borders

Six, to be exact.  This quilt started off to be a nice simple bear's paw.  It's based on a design Judy at Patchwork Times shared last year.  I've never done a Bear's Paw, so I wanted to try it.  I figured out the sizes, since the bear paw block is based on a 7-patch, and the alternate block is based on an 8-patch (no one ever said this would be easy).  My design is a bit different than Judy's, bypassing the half-bear paw blocks that she used.  Of course, that left me with half-chains which were just as much trouble :)

Then I ran into trouble.  I looked at how much fabric I had left (48" of the background fabric, and scraps of the others, since the blocks came from fat quarters) and started trying to figure out borders.  I made a feeble attempt to buy more background, but it's fairly old and I didn't have any luck.  So, after much calculating, I decided to jump in and try this design, crossing my fingers the whole way.  I knew that after I made the diamonds, I'd have to figure out a coping strip for the border, to make the size match.  The width of that would determine whether I had enough background fabric for the final border.

I did seminole piecing of the diamonds, which saved me a ton of fabric over my original square-in-a-square plan.And the coping strip I ended up needing was a simple 1/4" added to one of the borders on the top & bottom of the quilt.  Bonus!  I could end with a 1.5" outer border.  Maybe not ideal - I would have liked closer to 2 or 2.5", but I'll take what I can get in this case.  I have 1 strip of fabric, 1.75" wide and 20" long left.  I'll have to be creative when I'm ready to bind this one :)

I'm linking up at Work in Progres Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced and the Needle and Thread Network.