Saturday Plans

I've been working quietly away for the last few days. Finished a couple of customer quilts, then a couple of charity quilts went through the longarm. There are 4 now waiting for binding, so I should probably get working on that.

I've been slowly binding my Flowers in my Windows quilt. Hoping to get it done before the end of this month, so I can claim success on that item for my Q1 Finish-along challenge.  You can see the cat in the background there, quietly plotting how she can get herself inserted into that pile of quilt without me noticing.

But today is Saturday, which means it's a ME day.  I get to work on my own project on the longarm (no customer quilts today). So today's plan is Allietare!  I challenged two friends to finish their quilts for our next guild meeting in April. So I should probably step up and get my own done too :)

Step 1 - make a backing for her.  Fabric is chosen - it's tight, but doable.  Especially if I am careful with the loading. Only debate in my mind is whether the pieced strip goes down the center for balance, or on one edge, since then I'll only end up using about 2" of it (in the center, it's 10" to allow enough for loading the quilt.)  I'm leaning towards stuffing it on the edge. Either way, I doubt it will even show - it's four 25"x10" chunks of the same fabric as the rest of the backing, and it is a busy print.

I think a little part of me is hoping that the quilt might shrink or the fabric might grow.  82" wide, which should almost be doable with 2 strips of fabric and no extra pieced strip. But the fabric in my stash is barely 40" wide which is just not going to fit :(