the border that ate my quilt

I worked on putting the rows together today. It actually went pretty darn well. Had to add a bit to this O to get it long enough:

And rather than making a new X block here, I sewed on a large one, then cut it down to size:

So all my hugs and kisses are together now. I decided to slice an O in half, rather than make a new skinnier one. I like how that looks. And the extra X in the bottom row is cool too.

[NOTE: I'm showing this on top of my really old sheet that I cut up to use as a pin cloth.

But oh noooooo, disaster. The border fabric is completely and totally overwhelming. It looks horrible. Believe me, I am not happy about this. I want it to work, but it's just hurting my eyes (which means my hubby will really cry and beg me to take it away). I like my Xs and Os enough that I actually want them to show up.

I tried a bright pink which looked terrible and then this pinky red with purple bits (that didn't get used in the quilt at all). I kinda like it. Don't even think it needs an inner border.

Definitely better, but still not sure. It's pretty sad when the sheet I was using as a pin cloth looks better than my fantastic fabric. I know I am not not not going to put an orange or yellow border on there. They're still way down on my list of colors. Hopefully my recent online fabric extravaganza will arrive soon and one of the new fabrics will work. Tho I do like how this pinky red looks... Sigh. I hate it when a good plan falls apart.

I'm trying to get myself excited about learning French again. I was doing really well and then I got frustrated in not being able to hear the difference between "la femme saute" and "les femmes sautent" which are pronounced exactly the same way. Or maybe I'm tone deaf, but I hate it. But the more I put off getting back into it, the harder it's going to be as all the little tiny bits I picked up just go right out of my head.

Watched "Mean Girls" while I sewed today. It was a bit sweeter and messagier than I was expecting, tho I did enjoy it. And you're going to laugh at me, but I'm glad the Australian Open has started. Don't get me wrong, I generally hate sports and certainly don't participate in any, but for some reason tennis is really soothing to quilt to. Moves slow, you can look up when the audience cheers or gasps and you can always see the replay. Course, tennis isn't nearly as good as the Tour de France, but I've got half a year before that begins.