Backing Woes and Basting Foes

It is interesting how things happen sometimes.

Take for instance, my backing woes this week. My aunt, who is actually my mom's longtime best friend, makes quilts. When my older daughter was born she made her a quilt- entirely hand pieced- based on a pattern and fabrics I picked. It was (and is) gorgeous. But when my second daughter was born, I had been quilting for a couple of years so she assumed I didn't want her to make my little one a quilt. Wrong!

Of course I wanted both my girls to have a hand pieced quilt from their great aunt. She happily agreed, so I picked the fabric and pattern, and even prepped the fabric for her. Knowing she hates the binding step, I told her I would do the binding.

That is where the problem started. She assumed that I wanted the binding made out of the backing fabric and made all the binding. Then she didn't have enough backing fabric for her long arm quilter to quilt the quilt. Oh no! And when I told her I had the separate binding fabric it was too late!

So she came up with a solution. Take the backing fabric, seen here:

This is a Leah Day print that I LOVE. All the fabrics on the front are pulled from this gorgeous colour combo!

And get me, with my machine, to insert a big white plus sign into the fabric. The timelines were very tight because she is taking it to the long armer when she leaves for Florida in less than a week- and then she's gone for three months!

So I went along with the plan and now I think it was a happy accident because I really like the visual break that the white provides:

Nothing a little Kona White can't fix!

With that unexpected sewing in the middle, I also had to tackle my least favourite part of quilting: basting. Welcome to Canada has been sitting there, front and back pressed and prepped, batting at the ready (thanks to a generous donation from my friend A). Hubby was going out for the evening so I threw on some Netflix and tackled the least-fun task.

Some painter's tape and 505 Spray and you can't go wrong.

I got the quilt all basted and now it is ready for quilting. I think I'm going to stitch about 1/2" out from each seam to make a big grid. The backing is a solid red, also donated by A, which is not my favourite (the solid) because it shows all errors in quilting. But red is very Canadian and it is high quality fabric in a nice colour, so I couldn't not do it!

It is a twin-sized quilt that I hope will make one new Canadian feel welcomed.

I see much straight-line quilting in my future!