Bugs in a Jar Quilt

Finished the borders on the bugs in a jar quilt today.

Here is the finished twin bed sized quilt top.  I was planning to make the blue border look like a book (jar) case.  The blue I finally found to match a few days ago has too much stretch to it and so I decided to use the border I did, because it has almost no stretch and was a little bit heavier cotton.

The fabric that started this idea is the outside border and the bug fabric between the rows of jars.  It was one piece of fabric that alternated strips of the yellow bug and flower design' then the crawling bugs design.  I bought it about 6 years ago and finally my mom and sister found the last 7 bug fabrics for me a few months ago.

I found many jar pattern, but nothing that was just what I wanted, so I drew my own.

The most time consuming part was folding all of the 1 1/2" squares and pressing them.  Sew them to the bug fabric just a tiny bit to the right of the fold line.  Look closely and you can see the red line of the foot on the crease and the needle just to the right.  Pressing the corner to the top uses a tiny bit of fabric to roll over the seam and if you stitch right on the crease the new triangle piece won't come to the outer corner.  Trim off the extra fabric in the corner so you have 1/4 inch seam.

Sew the four corners on.  Then the long sides.  Next sew the jar lid and the piece above the lid together.  Sew on the two background pieces to the lid sides.  The next time consuming part was pinning the lid to the top of the bottle so the seams matched perfectly (well almost).

Finding a jar lid fabric that I liked took a lot of time also.  I used muslin as the background fabric and sewed everything with a scant 1/4" seam.
I'm happy with the results and hope to have it quilted this month using my mom's quilting machine.