And the borders are going on.

Luckily I've had a productive day. I've assessed my leftover fabric and test driven some available fabrics and I've settled on the borders for the quilt and even when I come back to check them later they still look fine.

I'm going with three borders; an inner border of dark pink, a middle border of a lovely civil war reproduction pink print which I couldn't seem to tone in with other pinks to use for a rose, and finally the outer border is a broad stripe of the light green fabric which was used for the light green leaves in the rose blocks.

A dark fabric as the inside border contrasting with the blue of the quilt top makes a unifying frame for all the different pink fabrics.

(You can see my lovely clean kitchen floor here where the light was the best this afternoon.)

I've found this great app for my android phone called QuiltCalc which has been developed by Robert Kaufman Fabrics and Quilters Paradise and allowed me to work out how much fabric I needed to cut and how many strips for each border. I just need to enter in the quilt top size, the width of the fabric, then each borders' width for the number of borders you want to add onto the quilt top and it calculates the number of strips to cut, the width to cut for each strip (adding on seam allowances) and advises the amount of fabric you will need to have on hand for each border. It has the border options for up to four borders.

I have always been terrible with working out the number of strips for borders so I find this app fan-freaking-tastic!

And now I've cut and sewn together all strips for each of my three borders and I've sewn the first border onto the quilt top. The only issue has been that the QuiltCalc told me to cut 7 strips for the inner border and I ended up needing an extra strip, so I've also added an additional strip to the second border and I assume will have to with the outside border too.
There is a margin of 10 cms included in the calculations but I guess that isn't enough for the way I lay out border fabric.

I lay the quilt top out flat and then along a centre line in the quilt top I double the border fabric flat and then cut to fit edge to edge. Then, doubling the border strip I iron the centre of the strip to create a centre-line then I match this line with the centre of the quilt top edge, pin, and sew. Some easing is required to make sure the border fits the quilt top, but it makes the border fit the quilt top neatly.

And so below is the first border on the quilt top. Only two more to go. Hopefully all done tomorrow and then long arm quilters can be scouted.