Top to Bottom, Front to Back!

Yesterday in a round of silliness, we had a very funny discussion on our facebook Quiltville Friends Page!

My Question was--- If a Quilt TOP is called a TOP, why is the backing not called the BOTTOM? And the silliness got more hilarious from there…but my most favorite response of all came from Laura V who said:

“Is that like --Why do they call them control TOP panty hose when that's not what's in them?????”

<<<GUFFAWWW!!!>>>

Oh, how I love these Quilters! hehehehe!

And all of this came about because I went back and forth about really wanting to piece a backing from a stack of orphan blocks for the quilt for the German magazine, instead of just slapping some ole thing on there and calling it good. I mean --- Why use 6 yards of ONE THING --- When you can clear out a bunch of old stuff, have a great time doing it, and really make something one-of-a-kind wonderful, right?

In the end, the orphan block digging won out!

And I found myself on the floor, with a bin of stuff around me, digging for anything that would fit the color scheme of the quilt ---Mostly looking for Pinks & Purples, but those all seemed to come with Lime green attached…Which is okay by me. And it is also okay to throw in some blue and a bit of yellow, and well, you know how color just takes over in my world…so Here we go!

Here I’ve got the blocks assembled into rows down the length of the quilt. The rows aren't sewn together yet...I was just measuring to see how things would look. Was I big enough? I like to group “like things” together…for one thing, it helps that they are usually the same size as each other….so separating by style and size works for me.

Row 1….not quite enough blocks in that size to finish the row, but if I added fabric at each end it would work, and that excess fabric was the “over hang” that the backing needed anyway.

Row 2…started with that big tie-dye looking star…16.5”! So that set the size width for that column, and I set about making all the other odd blocks fit that 16” width.

Row 3….Well THIS was easy breezy beautiful! A whole row of orphan Scrappy Trips blocks! I thought I was setting them zig-zag fashion, but I screwed that up with the top two blocks…they are chaining the same direction. Did I want to pick it out? Nope! It stays!

Row 4….Someone had gifted me these batik star and 9 patch hour glass blocks, and the stars were not the same size as the hour glass blocks and needed trimming down, and I lost some points in the process, but it is a happy pink & purple mess --- and I like it!

Row 5…..a bit more of everything….and we sew it all together!

I needed to add a bit more to the sides to give me the excess backing width I needed….so here we are! Doesn’t this look fun?

And I turned it around so you could see the Top ((Or the Bottom, or the End of the Back, or the Bottom…you get the picture!)) Here:

I’m really happy with how it turned out and what I was able to use in here…and just because I was in a “Gotta get this stuff out of here” mode….I pieced the batting too! ((Though I don’t know which end is the Top, The Bottom, The Front, or The Back!))

Yeah, it’s a wrinkly mess, but it hung out over night to relax a bit more. That box of batting scraps is pretty much empty of everything bigger than placemat size! Maybe I SHOULD get into doing small quilts to use them up? ;c)

I can’t show the top just yet for this one --- When the Magazine is released I will. In the mean time, I’ve been having a lot of fun with a gently scalloped binding on it. LOVE this soft and subtle curved edge!