Turning a square into a rectangle

Now this BOM programme is free (for the moment) so i am definitely not complaining, but a square kids quilt is just not that practical.  Creating more blocks just wasn't an option with the layout of the animals and the people and the colours... so making some border adjustments was going to be necessary.

The instructions have a narrow white border then a wider coloured border right the way round... so still a square.  I figured just adding a wider strip top and bottom would solve all my problems... but no! 

Then I thought adding a pieced border then adding a wider strip top and bottom would solve all my problems... but that was also a no!  Although I loved how all these nine patches looked.

Sometimes borders just do not behave!

Thinking it was my fabric choices... I went emergency shopping and added some alternatives...

This was my original choice for binding but it was just looking weird with everything so I put it to the side for further contemplation.

Hmmm these actually all worked colourwise but there just was something not right.

That old problem of making a border look like it was supposed to be there.  Mocking up plain borders on the sides and then the pieced border top and bottom then adding a plain border all separated by white sashing makes it look like it is supposed to be.

And that odd looking binding worked really well for the side borders...

And I really liked this blue dotted fabric for the top and bottom  borders as it tones down the pink overload but still has so many of the featured colours.

I am still sewing but it looks like a pink binding with black and white peeper will be the way to go.

And these two fabrics will feature on the back.  The floral was on sale for $10/m which will help to make up for the $30/m for the blue spot.  Sometimes the pricing at Spotlight leaves a lot to be desired.