Sandwich Making

Welcome back to Isabella's First Quilt Ever! In this episode, we tackle basting! You may notice I ignored Care's first piece of advice--not to do this on a wood floor. All of our floors are wood, so I threw caution to the wind, did it anyway, and sure enough, the tape pulled up some of the varnish. In our house, this is not even an issue, but if you are a normal person who cares about things like that, don't try it.

You'll also notice that Isabella was on hand to make sure everything was pulled taut. It took three Greenies and a twist tie to coax her off of there...

...only to have her flop right back down when I spread out the batting. At this point I saw the wisdom of putting her upstairs and closing the door. That solved one problem, but it caused another: MEOW MRRROOOWW!

So...yeah...am I the only one who had a little heart attack upon spreading out the batting? I expected it to be about the same size as the backing,and when it turned out to be smaller, I started running through each step, trying to figure out where I went wrong. Speaking of size...is the quilt top supposed to be that much smaller than the backing?

Well, at this point, it is what it is, so I pressed on. My primary concern was that the pieced strip would remain parallel to the edge. A close second was making sure the pattern of the backing fabric ran straight. Now, a word about that fabric--I chose it without thinking. I just figured I liked it and wanted to use a lot of it, the end. I also forgot about the pieced strip on the back. When I saw the instructions for piecing the back, I started thinking "uh oh" and wondering if I should switch to a different, plainer fabric. Gerry talked me out of it, so if anything goes wrong from here on out, it's his fault. :-)

Pinning wasn't too bad. Either time. Either time? Yep, I had to do it twice. When I finished the first time, I realized I hadn't left enough leeway on one end of the quilt. I had to go back to square one (haha, quilt humor), retape, respread, etc.

My quilt sandwich is ready for stitching! Like the rest of you, I am terrified. There is going to be MUCH practicing before I try it on the real thing! I have to say, those squiggles are making me extremely nervous. What do you think about a quilt covered in stars?