Making a Quilt Back

Yesterday I finally got the back all put together for my 9-patch quilt. These big quilt projects take me a long time; sometimes I feel like other quilt-makers are faster. But here's a bit on what it takes to put together a quilt back for such a large quilt. Nobody can accuse me of not posting enough about process, especially this month while I'm posting every day!

I went to JoAnn's to get backing fabric and found the cute Heidi Grace bird/leaf fabric (primary colors on white) and would have loved to back the whole quilt with it, but there wasn't enough. So I got the yellow and red prints too and a blue fabric as well. When I got home I decided to use the light weight denim that I already had on hand instead of the blue quilting fabric. Each piece of fabric had to be cut in half crosswise and then pieced together so it would be wide enough (over 66 inches according to the quilt-along post at crazymomquilts, I'm not going to measure it myself right now). I needed to make sure all the edges were straight and square, too. So I got all the fabrics ready and laid them out on my railing, then stretched the quilt out lengthwise on top of them to see if it was going to be big enough.

And... it's kind of hard to see in this photo, because I couldn't back up enough to show the whole thing really, but they aren't sewn together here, just lined up next to each other, and it was obvious that it wasn't going to be long enough once I sewed all the pieces together. Plus, I wanted to cut the red piece into two pieces so adding another seam would make it even shorter. I went to bed not sure what I was going to do. I was thinking about making a pieced strip to stick in there, but it wasn't what I really wanted to do.

The next day I decided I would use the red polka dot fabric that I had got from the JA remnant bin a week before I bought the other backing fabrics. I cut the red floral, started sewing the strips together, and then figured I needed the polka dot to be about 7" wide. And here it is!

I had to spread it out on the deck; I couldn't find a piece of floor big enough to photograph it this morning. Things have since been straightened up in my house and I am planning on pin basting it tomorrow. (I hope it's really big enough!)