Sunbonnet Sue Blocks

 The other night at Nimble thimbles I was fortunate to get some great Sunbonnet Sue blocks and a great quilt.  To my untrained eye I would say that these are 1930's fabrics but I'm not sure.  The Dresden plate quilt appears to be long-arm machine quilted and machine pieced so I am not sure if this is an older top that someone had finished, a multi-generational project or what.  Unfortunately both items smelled very strongly of moth balls and even in the short time with them in my car on the way home from guild I had a headache, watery eyes and an itchy nose.  I knew it would be a risk to wash the quilt but with the odor the way it was I felt I had no choice but to try.  So the quilt got washed in cold water on the gentle cycle the first time with baking soda added to the water and the second with vinegar added to the water.  I also used a couple color catchers in case the colors ran.  Even after two washings the quilt still smelled pretty bad but I decided to hang it to dry and see how it was in the morning.  Luckily it smelled much better in the morning and now only has a faint moth ball odor.  I didn't want to risk washing the blocks so I took and old sheet and sprayed it with febreze and laid the blocks on top then I folded the sheet over the top of the blocks and sprayed again with febreze and let it sit overnight.  This got rid of most of the odor but touching them is still a bit irritating to my skin and eyes so I am trying to get the top pieced and quilted asap so that I can wash it.

Fortunately I  recently got the perfect color solid lavender fabric at a quilters garage sale that I was able to use for sashing.  Now I can't decide what to do around the outside.  My original plan was to use the same size purple sashing around the edges, but I would like this quilt to be twin sized and that would make it plenty wide but not long enough.  My other thought would be to make the top and bottom sashing bigger than the sides but I am not quite sure I would like the look of that.  The last option is this floral fabric that I found in my stash.  I was thinking about an inner border in the purple and then a 4" or 5" border in the floral.  What do you think?

With Sashing

Close-up of Dresden Plate

Border Option

Dresden Plate