Bohemian Back Extension

The second project that I brought along to BAMQ's great Sew Day on Saturday, was to extend the length of the backing for my Bohemian Wife quilt. It was originally measuring just about exactly the same length as the quilt top, which won't work out well for me and getting the quilt layering and basting done well. I know myself and my process, and I've got to have a little bit more excess to work with. Not as much as a long-armer would require, but there has to be a little give in the measurements.

Honestly, the hardest part of this effort was adding the new fabric strip on to the correct side. 🤞🤞🤞 that I actually got it right. I'll find out when I actually layer and baste this quilt this week.

When I was working on this at Sew Day, there were a lot of comments that it should be a stand alone quilt top all on its own. Which is awfully nice of course, but I'm setting on keeping these together. And when I was explaining what the actual quilt top was and which pattern I'd used, I had to say the original pattern name out loud a couple of times. I found that it was hard for me to say out loud, so I definitely did the right thing for me to change the name to Bohemian Wife.

City Sampler Back Done

 

I finally had a chance to sit down and get the City Sampler quilt back in process. First I trimmed down the central snake image and added a grey border with cornerstones of the same fabric I used on the front for the cornerstone. Yet a different gray from the two on the front.

It got bigger and bigger, too big to pin up properly and get a final picture. The section added to the left of the snake to finish it off was mostly grey with some strips of color added in. I think this is the biggest backing I've made, measuring in at 114" square (roughly). This is off to the long armer today, I'm so excited!

Friendship Back Bits

 

Time to use up the scraps and bits left over from making the Friendship Star blocks for the back of the quilt.

Those are some long seams to sew. At least I got some of my scraps sewn together in time to be included in the quilt back.

Maybe just maybe I'm on a roll with quilt backs at the moment. Hopefully I am so I'm ready to bring a quilt to the long armer next week. 

Actually Metro Twist Back

 

The Metro Twist quilt top now has an official backing made. I had worked on this at the last Sew Day and without measuring had made a quilt back that was just shy of fitting. The width was just a little bit too small. I'm still very pleased with how close I came just intuitively sewing pieces of fabric together. And I don't mind the addition of the orange strip along the right hand side. Now to make the binding out of the strange blue from the quilt top background.

Metro Twist Back

 

Yesterday at a very delightful and entertaining Sew Day, I buckled down and sewed this together to use for the back of Metro Twist. 

It turns out it's almost exactly the right size, even though I didn't measure it all as I was making it. Which is actually just a little bit weird! A bit too long, and just a bit not wide enough.

I started with this one curved pieced block left over from making the quilt top and just kept adding fabric scraps and pieces. All of these were the same fabrics used to make the quilt top.

A Mostly Back

 

I was pretty productive at BAMQ Sew Day on Saturday. I got a very good start on the back for my Bohemian Wife quilt. This is what I got done which is 39"x45" completed so far out of the measurement of 64x70" that will be needed.

I managed to piece together all of the "orphan" or extra blocks that I had ended up with when I'd finished piecing the quilt top.

The majority of these fabrics are used on the front of the quilt. There are just a couple that aren't, but I'm not too fussed about that.  I'm glad that these floating blocks are no longer floating around separate. And I managed to stop myself from using the teeny HSTs. I think those will go into a pillow sham or something like that.

Back To Boho Back

 

There were still a lot of scraps left over from all the strips that made up the Bohemian Wife quilt top, so now I've gotten a lot of them sewn together into this piece.

Here's how the "made fabric" looks along with the other bordered blocks that will eventually make up the quilt back. It looks a mess doesn't it? The pattern for the quilt top really corrals all the print and pattern.

And then one more "made fabric" piece added at the bottom. Still not enough to make up a quilt back of course. All of those small blocks that I made from the teeny-tiny HSTs still need to be sewn into something useable. I'm thinking of setting them in solids or reads as solids chosen from the quilt top fabrics. That will translate into a lot of area to make up the quilt back.

Made It Work Back

Time for a back to the Made It Work quilt top I just finished. This is all the leftovers from making it, many of which are from the freebie table at the BAM sew day.

 And done! With only a few additions from my blue fabric boxes. Ready for sandwiching tomorrow hopefully.

Trinket Back Start

I started working on assembling the quilt back for the Trinket quilt at Sew Day this last weekend. This is the center part. I guess I wasn't paying enough attention and incorrectly assembled the strips, so when I returned home I un-sewed one of these long seams and reassembled and added one more strip to look like this:

There, that's better. 

I'm trying to highlight these crazy small paper pieced blocks by "floating" them on the dark purple solid.

I think it works to do that. These little blocks are so intense when you see them by themselves. Glowing so brightly against the dark purple.

The other part of this back is going to be squares of all the Alison Glass fabrics and more of the dark purple solid. I love this one particular set of three fabrics, "so Hot!"

At Sew Day I cut out about half of these 4.5" squares and then sewed them all together in groups. 

Now for some more assembling and rearranging and probably measuring too.

 

Five Sawtooths.

 Back to making Sawtooth Stars for the back of the Trinket Quilt.

After making two of the blocks with the paper piecing pattern, I decided to just do it myself without the papers. It was just too fiddly for me. I'm still not up for using paper piecing when I really don't need to.

I trimmed the paper pieced centers down to size (2.5").

I cut all the pieces oversized and trimmed it down to 4.5"

I used the little rotating rotary cutting mat that I have, very useful.

These al turned out so well.

I already showed you this one.

Fun fabric choices. I like how the words being at all angles makes the block look a little chaotic.

My little star turned out a bit wonky, but I still love it.

Eeeee, love them.

Just very photogenic.

One last group photo.

Easy Star to Start

For the back of the Trinket quilt, I'm paper piecing some of the special "finisher blocks" to use on the quilt back. There are two available, first is this Sawtooth Star, the other one looks like an award ribbon. The idea is to do something special for the bigger center of each block, as seen on this page. There are lots of options that are provided with the pattern for each. My plan is to try them all out just to see if I can. They involve using my new Add An 1/8th ruler instead of the usual Add A 1/4 ruler. So it will be a real challenge for me. For this first one I just fussy cut the center.

I like how it turned out, not really something that needs to be paper pieced of course, but it worked. Now on to the more complicated versions.
 

Stitch Happens Back Again

 

My next project to work on at the retreat was making a back for the Stitch Happens quilt. I brought along all the leftovers and some Tula Pink fabrics as well as a nice purple solid. I had a bunch of HST's left over from making all the blocks, so I trimmed them down to two sizes, 1.75" and 1.5". 

I pieced all the teeny scraps together with the purple solid into columns, surrounding them with the Tula Pink prints.

I had some pretty cute scraps left, so I'm glad I took this time to use them up on the same project they came from.

Those little HST's really ended up looking cute.

I mean, c'mon look at those!

This was a whole lot of pressing and trimming and it's still not put together and read to use. 

I wanted to put them up on my design wall and arrange them in the best way and there really wasn't a way to do that. So that's the final step, and then I'll be ready to do some quilt sandwiching.

Back Into Orange

Back into the orange bucket I went to make the back for the Orange Bullseye quilt. You can see the bullseyes through the lighter colored fabrics. I'll be using the new brand of fusible batting I just bought, hopefully it will hold as well as my old standard Hobbs.

And while the orange bin of fabric was out, I made the binding too.

The binding babies are stacking up, only one official one there in the middle corralling the blue/grey binding for the Japanese Houses quilt, the dark blue for the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt and the orange for the orange bullseye quilt on the left. I used empty thread cones to wrap them up.  Guess I better get the quilting done on these three quilts, right?

Oh no....I made the mistake of looking at the binding babies website when I went to grab the address to link and they have a Halloween Binding Babies collection and they are way too cute and luckily for my wallet they are sold out.
 

Fuse On

 

Amazing the difference a small border makes isn't it? To my eye, the border completes the total image in this case and ties together the dark blue pieces in each of the four big blocks. Using a thin dark blue binding around the edge would not have been enough visual weight to have the same effect.

Pieced together some fusible batting to use for this one. Reminder to self, check for threads under the off-white parts of the quilt top before fusing the batting on.

And since this quilt is 51"wide, I had to piece some backing fabric together as well. Now it's all fuse-basted and ready to quilt