Farmhouse Flowers

Why does it take so long to make a pieced back for a quilt??? Huh? Why is that?  As you may recall, I recently realized that the quilt show is coming up this Saturday, April 2, and all year, I've had my mind set to enter my embroidered Farmhouse Windowsill quilt in this show.  I had the top completed so I now have less than a week to get it finished and entered in the show.

Sunday afternoon was spent in the sewing room making the back for this quilt.  Of course, I was short on backing fabric so had to piece one.  And that's what took so darn long.  Could I simply stitch together blocks and/or strips to get the size I want?  Oh no, that would be way too easy. Instead I came up with this design which involved inserting a rectangular piece in the very middle of the backing.  That took a few hours by itself.  

But, by the end of the day, it was completed and ready to get pinned the next day. 

Above is the top, laying on the floor of the Rec Center.  

And here's a close up of the FMQ I'm doing in the embroidered  blocks. Nothing too fancy but it's something I feel comfortable doing.  I also stitched in the ditch around each of the embroidered sections and around the entire quilt along the large turquoise  flange. Then I put on my FMQ foot and began stitching around the embroidered flowers.  I chose to use a meandering vine and leaf design that I'm just making up as I go along.  I managed to finish two of the squares before I realized I was getting tired, so I put it all away for the day.

I also made up the label for the quilt on Sunday after I pieced the backing.  I decided to call it "Farmhouse Flowers" and stitched the label on my machine. I love using the various fonts to make up a label--it's much more fun than simply writing it out on a piece of fabric.

I plan on finishing the last 2 embroidered blocks this morning and then I'll tackle the thousand and one pinwheels I have in the sashing.   I've been struggling with how to quilt up all those pinwheels and coming up with no good ideas. So last night I checked in with Prof. Google, and got a couple of ideas that I'll try out today.  What did we ever do before Google?  

A few things to do in the house and then I'm in the sewing room for the rest of the day. Oh, I may take a little break and go for a walk since it's sunny and supposed to get to the high 60's today. Could it really be Spring?