I'm going to be quilting Gail's Emma F#&*ing Mary quilt. First though it needed a backing. While I was at retreat we laid the fabrics on top of each other and I thought the backing would be big enough but it turned out to be the same size as the quilt which is not ideal when you need it to be 4 inches bigger than the quilt on all sides for the quilting frame. I knew I'd be piecing the backing but I didn't want it to have too many seams. By the time I finished with it it had a billion seams. I'm not quite sure what happened there!
The fabrics I had to use as the backing were "designer" labels and not cheap. They're designed for quilters. So why are they so difficult to work with?! The green ladies in a frame didn't have a single frame in line with another frame. In order for it to be nicely trimmed for use you either cut some of the ladies heads off or it was just wonky. This kind of thing really annoys me. Do your job well quilt fabric designers!
There that told them! And I'm sure there are many of them reading this blog post right now ha ha!
I kind of decided to do an improv type backing. I cut out the green ladies into fairly useable pieces and put them up on my wall. I wanted it to look fairly off centre to disguise my lack of quilting experience. After I put it up on the wall I decided that was good enough and started cutting out the pink fabric to go around the green.
Oh and what a surprise! If you want straight lines going down the quilt you get wonky ones going across the top and vice versa. Quilting fabric designers!!! Quilters generally cut straight lines! Unless you cut while you're a few glasses of wine down at retreat that is. Then all bets are off.
I decided wonky lines going across the quilt would be less noticeable so that's what I did.
I had to stop then for a Turtle emergency! This much loved cuddly toy had a nasty accident but I managed to fix her. I didn't take pics of the finish because I didn't know the people asking for help and thought they might think I'm weirder than I am but the young lady was very happy with the result.
Back to the backing and I started by cutting the pink the length I wanted and I divided it into two unequal parts. I kept the selvages on as I was hoping they'd give the back some stability.
A fair bit of sewing later and this is the result. It's not great but it's quite nice when you look at it with your own eyes.
Now I have to prep the quilt top and get it quilted!
No rush ;-)
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