Progress Report

Today was rather a productive day. For one  thing, I got the last border on this quilt. Then I did a little digging around and found a perfect back for it--pink, with white "lace" butterflies on it. The pink is almost a perfect match.

Pictures when it gets back home.

Yes, this quilt got packed up into a box today, and sent off to the long-arm quilters I've used before.

They do good work and are (relatively) inexpensive.

I love this quilt! The fabrics are fun and it has a nice "hand." I requested a soft batting for it, too, so we'll see how it comes out.

Also, the Tumbler quilt has joined it on a journey north to the longarmer's!  I gave it a good press then laid it out on the guest bed. Partly, this was to make sure it was good and dry before boxing it up, but I also wanted to see how it would fit on a real bed.

The guest bed is a queen, and while I didn't want to move all t he pillows on it, I figured I could get a good idea of how it would work.

So on one side it comes down about as far as the quilt that's on there...

but on the other side it's much longer. That's because I put it on sideways.

Hey, it's hard to juggle a large quilt top when you don't want to spoil all the hard work that went into ironing it.

Have I mentioned that pressing isn't my favorite part of quilting?

Pressing isn't my favorite part of quilting. But it sure makes a difference in how the quilt looks!

So this one has a 108" wide backing in a 30's red and white small floral print. I asked for a butterflies-and-lace motif for the quilting. We'll see how it comes out!

Also off to the longarmers are four more quilts--check out the sidebar! Might not be 6 FOs, but there are now 6 quilts that are going to be another step closer to DONE.

I had fun assigning backings to the tops--having to keep in mind that the backs need to be 4-6" bigger all the way around than the quilt top. That was a challenge.  But, I was able to find backs for all of them, and only one has 2 different fabrics for the backing.

That's the Chicopee quilt. The two fabrics I chose are pretty compatible--one is a peachy-greeny sorta-stripey print, and the other is a light olivey green tone-on-tone. I asked them to use a variegated thread with peach and green, hoping to unify the two halves. Should be interesting. I have to admit that my favorite part of the Chicopee fabrics is... their name. The two colorways are called Fairview and Waterfall. Chicopee is my home town; I'm from the Aldenville section, and my cousin still lives in the Fairview section. The Chicopee River runs through town and Chicopee Falls is where the--wait for it--waterfall is!

The other quilts that went off are the Yo Gabba Gabba one (found it a royal blue solid back and asked for variegated thread to perk it up); the one with the busy Lily of the Valley print (green butterflies to match the Art Nouveau quilt); and the blue and pink Twisted Sister quilt (blue and white wavy print).

There will be more pictures when they come home! In the meantime, if you click on any of the links, they'll take you to my Flickr set with more pictures of the quilts and my furry helper!

And not that I'm counting or anything, but I believe that all together today some 34-36 yards of backing fabric went out of here. But who's counting?