Basting Begun

An update on the quilt I tried to baste last week.

This quilt was born because I fell in love with a fabric line and had to use it right away! At the time I bought a layer cake (set of 10" squares) and that is what I used for the body of the quilt (plus a lot of my own stash in suitable colours and tones).

Even after I finish a quilt top, my eyes are still caught by fabric that would have been good in it, or, in this case, caught by a mini charm pack of the same fabric line. ("Charms" are 5" squares; "Mini charms" are 2.5" squares. This pack contained 42 squares from the fabric line.) Even though the top was assembled and I had no use for them, I couldn't resist buying this mini charm pack. I obviously was not over this fabric line. (And the mini charms are so cute and only a few dollars. Very hard to resist.)

This charm pack has been hanging around in the room I use for sewing ever since, which is at least a few years. I don't have a set place to store fabric pre-cut packs because I don't tend to buy a lot of them. And I didn't want to break up the set and put the squares with my scraps. So the neat little bundle moved from surface to surface as it needed to be moved out of the way. Repeatedly getting my attention but it was never the time to use them.

Until.

Until I needed just a few inches more width on my quilt back! Sewing them together in one long strip and inserting them as a stripe might just add the width that I needed.

I decided to piece them alternating light and dark.

I did it in sections instead of one long strip because it's very easy to have a long strip warp or curve on you. So they were pieced into 8" and 10" sections and then I added a solid border on each side. I had extra of a tannish brown colour that worked well. (I bought it online for my Lucy Boston but it really wasn't the right shade. I had just enough for what I had in mind here!)

I put 2" (finished) on each side and the top and bottom.

I didn't have enough of the brown for the full height of the backing so I added strips on the top and bottom. I looked through my scrap bags, and found leftover pieces from making the top, including more fabric from the same fabric line.

With this extra 6" in width, the backing was just wide enough:

I laid the top on top of the backing and the backing is 2-3" wider than the top. Not enough extra to quilt it on a long arm machine, but enough for me to work with on my domestic machine.

Once that was confirmed, I secured the backing to the table (good side down, of course; not like pictured above), covered it with the batting and then the top. The batting was also just large enough. I buy queen size battings and usually have a comfortable excess on the width and plenty of extra on the height. Not in this case but it was enough.

Then then pinning started.

And continued and continued. I had two and a half hours to do all this (including a final pressing of the top and steaming the batting, which I have not shown) and that was not enough time. As my departure time approached, I was able to confirm that the room wouldn't be needed by anyone else in the next week so I left the quilt set up on the tables and will continue--and hopefully finish--next week.

Also, I need to buy another pack of pins because I have enough for the center but not the borders. That will mean I have 900. Surely that is enough?