Downton Abbey Sew-In Week 4

Mrs. Bobbins is a woman on a "Downton Abbey" mission. (from Pickledish.com, home of Kansas City Star Quilts)

See? I’m not the only one.

As I typed the heading of this blog post — week 4 — I realized that means there are only three weeks left to go, both of “Downton Abbey” season 3 and of my self-imposed schedule to make significant progress on my UFO.

But first things first, as they say. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

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Sybil, Tom and their baby daughter in a happy moment

Remember when I said that I knew about two* major spoilers? Sybil’s death from eclampsia was one of them. Although I’ve read that the actress, Jessica Brown-Findlay, asked to be released from her contract in order to take advantage of offers from Hollywood, it was still a tough loss in the context of the story. I was fine, actually, until the scene when Cora was calmly saying good-bye to her own baby at Sybil’s bedside. I’ve seen that play out in real life, and it’s just… rough.

OK, enough of that. I’m at work and I don’t have time to get emotional all over again. If you’d like to read an insightful blog recap of this episode or any other, may I recommend the blog post written by Tom & Lorenzo? They pretty much said everything else I’d want to say. (Be forewarned that they occasionally use salty language.)

END OF SPOILERS — ONLY QUILT TALK AHEAD

Back to my UFO. I’ll be honest — I didn’t even look at it while I was watching this episode. I still have to put the borders on, mark the quilt top and baste it before I can sit in front of the TV while I’m hand quilting. But I will share some of my process so far.

As I said last week, I cut border strips of my two green fabrics years ago but I’ve never really liked how they looked against the quilt top. The light green borders will finish at 2″, and the dark green (a 1997 Hoffman California screen print) at 2 1/2″.

I really don’t like either of these options. I just seem to hear a loud “clunk” when I look at these arrangements. I don’t have enough of the white tone-on-tone to add another border strip and I don’t feel like hunting for another white print that would coordinate. So that’s why I went for the gold (a Michael Miller Fabrics blender).

To my eyes this looks much more interesting. The gold border will finish at 1″, just enough to give the quilt that spark I like. I think I prefer the arrangement above, but I played around with other configurations.

So before the next episode airs, I will have added my borders and cornerstones of the white tone-on-tone. I’m also finalizing some of my quilting motifs based on illustrations in The Crafter’s Design Library: Celtic by Chris Down (David & Charles, 2003).

illustrations from The Crafter’s Design Library: Celtic by Chris Down (David & Charles, 2003)

These large Celtic crosses are just about the right size to fill the open spaces in my quilt top, as you can sort of tell from the photo below where I laid the quilt top over the cross on the left.

It will be a lot of hand quilting, but I think the final effect could end up being pretty darn gorgeous. If I was smart I would do a test block, but I don’t know if I have the time or energy to be smart about it. After all, there are only three weeks left!

Click here to read about the beginning of the DASI.
Click here for the week 1 update.
Click here for the weeks 2 & 3 update.

*While searching online for the photo of Sybil, I scrolled past a different photo that reveals yet another spoiler. So now I’m up to three spoilers. Thanks, Google Images.