Pavlov's Dog and Quilting

Like Pavlov's dog I am now conditioned. Last week I learnt how to successfully piece the back of a quilt and like Pavlov's dog I will do this every time I hear the whistle, or hear the bell or whatever it is Pavlov uses to train his dog.

This week I am backing the Shimmer Snowflake quilt in Yvonne's quilt-a-long. And this time I jumped at the chance to piece the backing. The front of the quilt is very restrained, it is ok to go a bit mad in the back. Its good for the backside to be a feature.

So, "stash in" this week  was the dark blue shower of hail, from the Paragon in Belfast. Cheap and cheerful Aladdin's cave of a shop. I think I have bought that Rose and Hubble spot in nearly every colour.

I found a length of fabric at home in pale blue with a star on it. I thought the star looked a little  like a snowflake, so that's good. What seemed like a meter had a big chunk cut out of it. This snowflake quilt is bigger than it seems, the backing still wasn't big enough. The half meter of pale blue spot for binding the #behemoth was called into play here too.

I had also added in a long strip, both long ways and cross ways of offcuts of the front fabrics. I also added in some rocket fabric. Well, I have to, it is a quilting jet girl quilt-a-long after all. This is some fabric Yvonne herself had previously sent me, so it is somehow appropriate to incorporate it.

If I was being hyper critical I would say the white to bulk out the star strip should be in line with the stripe. Call it lack of planning, or benefit of hindsight.   Life isn't perfect and neither is the backing. Good to live outside the box!  In our scrapbooking group, we joke about being matchy matchy in our outfits. Always a danger in the middle aged woman, matchy matchy. Not a good look.

Of course this morning the sun shone, but once again I couldn't get a perfect photo. Every time I went to snap, the wind blew the whirly bird round. I wish I had my old straight line back. Yet by some strange thing, once I hung out the bed sheets, the wind dropped and the rain started again.
 Once again I will leave you with some more gratuitous photos of trying to photograph a quilt back.

I won't promise I will have this quilted for Yvonne's link up. In fact I know I won't. You may notice I still have the bottom right hand corner to piece, and the whole backing is narrow by about 10". I need to go shopping in my stash again. I have some donated blue paisley fabric, but I'm not sure about it, not matchy matchy enough. I have however started quilting the #behemoth. It is more pressing. It is also a ton weight. I will definitely be weighing  this - Wahey!

Another excellent example of Pavlov's dog is that Sunday night means its time for me to write a blog post and sign up with Molli Sparkles Sunday Stash whilst I multi task by watching Poldark. I don't do it every week, but it sort of marks the weekend and beginning of a new week.

Helen x
 So, linking up with Molli Sparkles and Sunday Stash