Sabryna's Fair and Square quilt

My daughter Sabryna is also a fan of Bonnie Hunter.  This is a pattern from one of her books, called Fair and Square.  

My daughter raided my stash to make this quilt.  There wasn't even one piece from her own stash.  She is saving her stash for something special.  She is not sure what yet, but something special.  

Sabryna started with a piece of green from my cupboard, pulled out some squares from my box of 1 1/2" squares and she used up some scraps of leftover white muslin.  Once those blocks where done she raided the scraps of solid black for the frame around the blocks.

The second alternating squares are string blocks cut in half.  This quilt is queen size so those string blocks were very labor intensive.  She made a bunch, and put them away for a while.  Months later she took them out and finished them.  The top got put away again for another while.  When it came to the border, she decided to do something different, so she raided my drawer of 2" strips and the white muslin scraps to make her piano keyboard border.

My daughter is not a die hard quilter, she just gets into it when the mood strikes her.  She prefers to sit in front of the tv watching reruns and doing handwork.  But when she sets her mind to it she can accomplish a lot.  One summer she made three queen size quilts, all of them with tedious small pieces.

For the quilting she wanted something a bit funky, so I used Prickly Pear Glide thread to quilt Field of Dreams by Patricia Ritter through Digi-Tech now known as Urban Elementz.  This design is very dense, which helps pass over all of the small pieces.  The seams on this quilt are definitely staying put.

  

When we bought the backing for this quilt the salvage said it was 108" wide and we bought 3 meters (120").  She thought to use the extra length for the binding.  Unfortunately, after the backing fabric was washed it only measured 96" W and 104" L.  I couldn't believe it.  I had to measure it several times before I actually believed it.  The quilt was 98" W X 108" L.  I was so upset for her, because she just didn't want a pieced backing on this quilt, like the rest of her quilts.

But there was nothing to be done about it.  So to speed things up I made the 14" pieced strip, seen above, with both sides having a black strip, to go through the top third of her backing.  In order to only make the one pieced strip, I turned the backing sideways, so that the 104" L would be used for the width instead.  Even with the extension, I had to baste some additional leaders to the backing in order to not waste any fabric and get them attached to the longarm leaders.

Do you see what is coming up.....I was left with only 2 1/2" of backing fabric at the bottom.  But talking about close.....do you see the, less than 1/4", of batting that remained at the bottom.  I really don't like getting to the bottom and praying, that while I quilt the quilt, that the backing will not shrink more than the top, especially as I was quilting densely on this one.  You can bet that I had my fingers cross all the while.  This one was just too close for comfort.

In the end, the quilt turned out nice and best of all, my daughter loves it!

On a side note, a thought I had to myself....I really like having my stash in a somewhat organized way.  My daughter was able to pull directly from my pre-cut scraps to make her quilt.  The strings are forever there, it seems that they constantly multiply.  Even after she finished the string blocks, it didn't look like she made much of a dent.

Having the scraps organized definitely helps me be more productive.  While I am finishing a quilt and putting the left overs away, I do as Bonnie Hunter does, and trim the small stuff into usable pieces that fit my system of usable sizes.  I even have three planned future quilts that I will cut for, as I tidy up.