Quilt back!

When I was in college, sometime in the last century, my mother bought me a kit for a beautiful quilt top.  We were shopping at Quilting in the Country, a wonderful quilt store on a farm just outside of Bozeman, MT, right near the mountains (where I went to college). 

Over the years, I have slooooowwwly been working on this quilt.  What was I thinking, making a queen-sized quilt for my first (and possibly last) quilt?  It's turning out to be a beautiful work of art and I do love it.

Last year, we took a trip to Cleveland at Easter time to visit my best friend.  She and I went quilt/yarn shopping and she helped me find the perfect border fabric for the (long-neglected) quilt.  It's beautiful.  I love it.  I (after procrastinating for a while) dutifully attached the borders to the quilt (last year).

Our comforter on our bed is falling apart.  I can't find anything (that I can afford) that I like very much to replace it with.  So I need to get to work on this quilt.

A few weeks ago, being desperate, I took my quilt top to Knit Night because I know some of the ladies there are also very talented quilters.  Kathy (owner of the shop and amazing quilter) recommended going around the corner to the new quilt shop to see what they said about getting it quilted.  I went, and lo and behold, they had a sale on fabric that day and I got a back for my quilt--all one piece, high-quality, beautiful fabric--for a little over $40.  I was thrilled!  No junky sheet back for me.  Here's what I ended up with.  It's a brown, with a small pattern all over, sort of a floral-ish thing.  Very nice fabric, with that lovely sheen and drape that always sort of reminds me of ribbon in some way.

The backing is the fabric at the bottom of the picture.  You can click on the picture to make this (or any of my pictures) larger.  Isn't it pretty?

To get it machine quilted would be over $200.  I think I'm going to try a simple diamond pattern in the body of the quilt and then simple lines around the border, on my machine at home.  Of course, I need to get my sewing machine serviced first (fingers crossed it will be fixable), because it is starting to go slower and slower and slower and winding bobbins takes a year for each bobbin to wind (I may be exaggerating slightly, but not much).  If I fail, because it is a BIG queen size (enough to put over the top of my bed and even do the thing where you tuck it around your pillows in an old-fashioned sort of way), I'll save up my pennies and have it done at the store.  Hopefully it'll be done in the next few months (or as soon as the machine gets fixed, whichever happens first).