UFO # 5 for January

I am so excited.  I finished my  UFO early.    At this point in my life I am considering completion to the flimsy as completing my UFO.  Perhaps next year I will consider UFO’s from flimsy to complete.
In 2006 I participated in a block of the month exchange at the Shop Heart to Hand.  I received 13 squares.  The pattern was A Fathers Journey – which I think was an original design but I might be wrong.  I would occasionally take them out and try to figure out what to do with them but always came up empty.    At one point I even bought coordinating fabric to tie them all together.  A green, a goldish tan, a burgundy red flora and a dark blue.
Last year I could not get them out of my mind and I finally decided to do something out of them. I went through them and really looked at what I had.  All thirteen had the same piece of medium blue fabric in all of them and they also had a mixture of dark blue, light blue, tans and one had red and a few other oddities thrown in.   I can’t remember the original count but I determined that what I needed  was 5 dark, 5 light, 3 red and 3 neutrals and i had to do some resewing.  So I got to work and tore some of them apart, added other fabric that coordinated and made sure that the one fabric was in all of them. I think i did 14 of them and then had two more complete ones to sew up.
Last September I was house sitting and  I brought the project along.  I sewed the final two blocks and then started measuring the others and found they were not very accurate  and the seam ripper came out.
This is what I ended up with . 


Then I was stuck.   What was i going to do next?  I laid them out in all different order but could never find a good balance. I tried out all the fabrics as borders.   Nothing seemed to work.  Then inspiration struck.
i came up with a 5 set on point in a square.

I then I layed the remaining ones around the square but I had a couple of problems.  One.  I  was a square short but did not have any more of the fabric that was in all of them.  That was okay-  I used fabric that was in many of the others and hoped it didn’t stand out.
This is what it looks like.
    
The next problem was the square in the middle was slightly smaller then the outside square.  Inspiration left and i put it back in the box.  I took it home and asked my mom to help me deicide on borders.  Still no decision.
Then  I put it down on my UFO list and it was pulled for January.
I am house-sitting again so I brought it back out and I set down on Thursday night and put in a 4 hour session.
I was able to figure out a way to  showcase the difference between the two “squares”.   I then held it up against myself and it was too square and wasn’t long enough to use on the couch.  So I added another row on the top and the bottom of a neutral.   
I then cheated  (wink) on the last border.  I had borders already cut from another quilt that wasn’t used.  All I had to do was use two of them and just had to cut the two long sides.
Tada!!!  Sorry about the bad lighting it was at night.