I'm trying to get better at finishing!

OK, it's not such a great picture, I cut off the left side, but you can see most of that first column of blocks. Now, why am I trying to get better at finishing? I guess that is a pretty straight forward statement, but when you understand that the top below is the 2007/2008 Block of the month quilt from Odegaards, and I've had the columns of blocks together for way over a year, and just sewed them together tonight!!!!!

And I looked up what is left to do... I have three borders to add. I know I purchased all the fabric, but don't remember if I planned to follow the directions, or if I was going to make any of the borders wider. So now I have a puzzle. Good thing I like puzzles.

Why did I not do this sooner? Probably because I was concerned that I was going to have a difficult time getting all the points and corners to match. And yes, it was a bit difficult. The log cabin blocks were pretty good for size, but the pieced ones varied by almost 1/2 inch. Silly reason not to get to this sooner. And I really like the colors in the quilt. (The flash washed them out a little!). This will be a queen sized bed quilt when I get it done.

I'm going to do the quilting myself. I don't have a long arm, but I have a Juki with a big opening under the arm. It is in a table, but I like to push the fabric around as I quilt.

I'm thinking of doing custom quilting designs in each of the pieced blocks, and doing a feather up the diagonals created by the log cabin blocks. If anyone is reading my blog again yet, what do you think? What would be a good way to quilt this? It gets two narrow borders, then an 8 inch border. I'll post another picture when I get the borders on.