BellaOnline Forums Hobbies and Crafts Quilting Tips or Guidelines?

Do you have any good tips for chosing fabric for sashing? When I make blocks that will be sashed together, I put the bottom strip, the right strip, and the connecting cornerstone on as soon as I'm done with the block. I never have to deal with long strips that need to have seams matched.

So now I have enough of the State Blocks done to started to put them together - and I made an awful mistake in choicing the sashing. The fabric I began using has rows of 1 inch square flags - all red, white and blue. My description of the assembled mess could be any or all of ... busy, gaudy, distracting. I am using just reds, blues, and white in my blocks - All small prints or color on color. Remembering that each block is different, what would you suggest for the sashing?

Hi GrannyH, this is a problem for most quilters when putting a mixture of blocks together. My advice is to keep it simple, perhaps choosing a lovely dark blue to bring all the blocks together. Most "scrappy" quilts look great with a plain color for the sashings, I guess that will work best here.
Cheerio for now

I always use plain, solid fabric for sashing. I will use a pretty, tiny pattern in the corners/intersections. I like that look.

Thanks to both of you. I purchased both solid red and solid blue. I'll give each a try before I make a final decision. I may use my original fabric as the cornerstones. I'm not having any fun taking the already-done blocks apart. I have cross-stitched the 2-letter State Code for each and sown that into the sashing. Of course, that just added to the busy-ness of the mess.

I'm sure it will all come out in the end.

I am going to put this down as a lesson well learned. Sashing should not be DISTRACTING.

Because Red is my favorite color, I tried it first; and I didn't need to go on to the blue. I have replaced the sashing on all the blocks I had completed and am going on from there. This is still going to take me a long time to complete, but now I know what the plan is. I do imagine I'll have questions again when I start the border - but I'll leave that for another topic and time.

GrannyH