What do you know!

Funny how writing the previous post helped me make decisions about this quilt. As soon as I finished the post I tossed all but five of the blocks into the garbage. I tucked the red oak leaf wreath in my basket for handwork, took the silver thread out of the peacock's tail, took the funny braid off the apple basket and the edge braid off the red and gold basket. I pulled out my basket of rolled up Baltimore patterns, found the appropriate patterns, matched them with the kept blocks and put them back into the drawer.

Then I started reading the comments being left on the post. Call me silly - but it never occurred to me to put the twelve finished blocks together into a quilt top. I my mind Baltimore album quilts are square, so I needed either sixteen blocks or twenty five blocks. I started thinking about the comments that had been left and realized that the quilt police would not come arrest me if I constructed a simple twelve block album top from the finished blocks. I pulled out the five blocks I had saved and took another look at them. And decided that I didn't want to spend my precious time finishing them when there are so many other projects I'd rather do. So I pulled out all the pins, took the needles off the thread, and tossed the remaining five blocks into the waste basket.

I had several possible border choices in my stash so I chose one and went to work. I trimmed the blocks to 15 1/2", sashed them with 1" strips, cut cornerstones from the edges of the tossed blocks, and sewed the top together. As I worked on this top I felt a marvelous sense of relief. My oldest UFO is now a finished top - one that I can use for practicing machine quilting on appliqué. The appliqué itself is far from perfect as these are the pieces I learned on, so it makes sense to learn new quilting patterns on the top.

Thanks to everyone who helped me work toward this decision. I couldn't possibly be happier!