Backing Up

I've whined before about how making backings is just not my favourite part of quilting, but there comes a time that you just have to buckle down and get them made. So, when a recent sudden spurt of initiative struck I didn't feel inclined to argue with it, at least for the first little bit.

God's Green Earth was the first one on the block. I love this quilt and have had the backing fabrics for ages so to the front of the line it went. If there were a few more meters of this blue I would have loved for the entire backing to be made solely of it, however, I only had about half of what I needed so at least one other print had to join it; a mauve won out. 

BTW, I love the way ThousandsOfBolts ships their fabric labelled - no need to unfurl, measure and refold the entire thing to figure out if the piece will do.

Roberta always chuckles at my backing grumpiness saying, 'It's one big seam!' But I realized as I moved on to Snippets why this was seldom the case for me. My quilts tend to be BIG, so they are quite often a little shy of being able to just use two widths of fabric. I also try and avoid having a seam directly down the middle. It all means that there's some figuring and math involved. So much for one big seam.

I was very close with having enough width on this one but it was just too tight and I didn't feel good about making Roberta make it work when she put it up on the frame to quilt. Sooooo, down to the sewing room I went to see if there were any remnant blocks. Eureka! I found a few and a few others that could be sewn into HSTs and added to the mix.

So they became a strip...

and added just under three inches to the width. 

I'm happy with it, but what started out as 'two quick seams' quickly moved to a couple of hours of work. I shouldn't complain - they are now both ready to go. Maybe I need to start working to a smaller size so that I can avoid some of this grief.

Now to figure out how to quilt them....M