Borders, in more ways than one

I got the borders on the I Spy quilt a couple days ago. I had been worried that the green background was too dark, so I put in a yellow inner border to lighten it up a bit. I considered using FMQ to write the names of some of the items in the quilt along the inner yellow border, but was afraid it would get sloppy. I also would need to do that before I made the sandwich since it would read backwards on the back and would interfere with the map I'm using for backing. I think there's probably enough going on this top that I don't need to add more. Here's a very crooked photo.

I was looking at this quilt closely again and noticing all the little things I had fun including. I have a hexagon with a Dutch girl in it, since this is for the children of my niece who lived in the Netherlands growing up. I put in a block of Abe Lincoln, since I live in Illinois. There's a hand print block that makes me think of the sweatshirt with my kids' hand prints that I made when they were very young. And then I thought of my niece's children looking at this quilt and I wondered what memories they will form of it, and how long they will carry those memories? I must be in a reflective mood, because it reminded me of the old Simon & Garfunkel song that alludes to the 'borders of our lives'. Normally I'm not so sentimental, don't know what brought this on.

As long as I'm on the topic of borders, I'll mention that I'm crossing a few this summer. We'll be spending a couple weeks in Greece and Italy, preceded by a few days in Amsterdam. I can't wait!! I've been to both Amsterdam and Italy before (though only one of the places in Italy we're going this time) but I've never seen Greece. Here are a couple things I'm looking forward to:

The amazing mosaics. This was my one and only quick shot of the tiles in the entry way of San Marco in Venice. No photos allowed inside. I didn't know that meant no photos in the entry, but they let me know very quickly. As you can tell by the light reflecting in the upper left corner, these tiles were underwater -- Venice does flood. Truly amazing floors, amazing. I bought a book with photos of many of them, and came home and got Bella Bella Quilts.

This was a stairway landing in the Doge's palace next door, where photos are allowed.
And, of course, I'm looking forward to good eats! Here's a cheese stand at a farmer's market in Tuscany.
And here's where you can go to learn to cook -- but with such flavorful, fresh ingredients, you don't have to be a chef to make delicious food.