Border patrol

I came to the realization recently that I had selected an entirely unsatisfactory inner border fabric for the Amish Steps #2 quilt that's currently on my sewing table.  The original choice was made because the intended recipient remarked on the beauty of the fabric, and the colors work with all the other fabrics beautifully.  The problem is that this fabric has way, way too much pattern going on to serves as a functional border:

From Fabric & In Progress

Grantward agrees with me, and it's just a damned shame that it means I'll have to go fabric shopping today after work!  Look out, Sew Sassy, here I come.  I think a dark evergreen batik with a marbled pattern (like the main color in Amish Steps #1) would be the perfect fabric to act as a frame, plus it ties in really nicely to the dark green leaf outlines in the outer border fabric:

From Fabric & In Progress

(Okay, except the flash totally washed out the colors, but you can see this fabric is much better).

Finally, my shopping trip to Sew Sassy will be augmented to include buying fabric to make an Amish Steps quilt for myself (#3).  While piecing Amish Steps #2 (the one with two background step colors), I laid a row down upside down (and luckily caught it before stitching it in), but it inspired a different layout, and Grant agreed that it would be better to have him skip shopping for a souvenir yarn for me when he's in Toronto next week for TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival) and instead have me buy fabric using his account.  I couldn't agree more (well, it was my idea, after all).  So, when all my 2010 holiday gift giving quilts are done, I can put that alternate assembly pattern into play in an Amish Steps for myself.  I may also have to make a new rule for Mr. Grantward:   If his name goes on the gift card for quilts that I make, he should not only be buying the fabric for those quilts but also buying me an equivalent amount of fabric to make myself the same quilt.  I suppose I could just teach myself Electric Quilt 7 so I could "see" my alternate block arrangement, but at this stage in my quilt fabric stash development, I'd rather buy it, cut it, and piece it to see what it will look like.  I'm giddy at the thought of selecting more batiks!