Scrappy Celebrations is Quilted, Awaiting Binding

Well, whadda-ya-know -- Quilting a mediocre quilt top DOES make it better!  I finally managed to get my Scrappy Celebrations project quilted and I like it a lot better now.  I quilted it with Curly Feathers E2E, a nondirectional allover feather design that seemed a good fit for the soft colors and florals of the primarily Tilda fabric prints.  Even those blocks with the solid raspberry and aqua fabrics that felt out of place to me before seem to "belong" better now that they are quilted over with feathers.  Glad to have moved this stalled project from collection of unloved blocks to quilt top, and from quilt top to not-so-bad quilt.  I trimmed it after taking these photos, and I won't be labeling it since I'm planning to donate it, so just the binding remains.

53 1/2 x 62 Scrappy Celebrations with Curly Feathers E2E Quilting

One of the reasons it took me so long to quilt this is that I was determined to use up some of my many, MANY batting scraps rather than going the easy route and cutting new batting off the bolt.  I was determined to use up batting scraps, but not very motivated or excited to actually piece those scraps together...  I eventually dug out three long, skinny strips of what all seemed to be Quilters Dream Cotton Deluxe Loft batting, cut straight edges on them with my rotary cutter, and pieced them together with a 9 mm wide 3-step zigzag stitch and 50/2 cotton Aurifil thread.  So there are two batting seams running vertically through this quilt, and you cannot see or feel them at all now that it's quilted.  Waste not, want not, right?

Batting Joined with 9 mm 3-Step Zigzag Stitch

I chose the Curly Feathers quilting design because it's one of my few feather designs that is nondirectional, and I wanted to load this quilt sideways to speed up the quilting and to keep those batting seams parallel to the frame rollers so I could keep an eye on them as I was working my way through the quilting.  

TGIFF August 21, 2026: Scrappy Celebrations Pieced Backing + My ETERNAL HOME RENOVATIONS!

Hello, and welcome to TGIFF "Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday."  As I begin writing this post on Thursday evening, it is already two minutes past the deadline by which I was supposed to have published the post and forwarded the link along to Laura.  Those of you who know me will not be surprised that I am down to the wire... again!  If you are unfamiliar with the TGIFF linky party, click here to learn more about it.

So let's get on with it!  I'll kick off with my underwhelming sewing related finish: After completing my Scrappy Celebrations quilt top on July 29th, I finally got around to piecing a backing for this quilt using stash yardage and leftover backing scraps from other quilts.  Here you see my final step of checking that the backing is indeed big enough for the margins I need when I load it on my long arm frame.  Measuring is all well and good, but sometimes rulers lie -- my eyes can tell me immediately if I've goofed when I lay the quilt top right on top of my backing and check how much backing sticks out all the way around the quilt top.

Yes, My Backing Is Big Enough to Load On My Long Arm Machine

Here you can see the pieced backing itself, oriented sideways as I'm planning to load this quilt sideways and quilt it with a non-directional design:

Pieced Backing Turned Sideways

The gray and pink floral is a JoAnn's print that I picked up on sale years ago when I got my first long arm machine, and I was going to use it for quilting practice before I realized that solids make for better practice fabrics as you want to be able to see your mistakes in order to improve.  I just ripped off a long enough piece of that yardage, then snipped and ripped it in half near the center bolt fold line, and inserted an 18" wide combination of Kaffe Fassett circles and a bubblegum pink Tula Pink print.  Those fabrics already had been ripped on grain and seamed together because it was leftover from another quilt backing, and it was just enough to widen the JoAnn print to fit my quilt with margins for pinning to the leaders and attaching to the side clamps.  All pressed and ready to load!  My next task will be figuring out which batting to use, cutting that to size, and actually getting this quilt loaded and quilted.  Let's be honest with each other: my original plan was to have this quilt actually quilted and not just be showing you that I made the backing today, but this is the Real Life Happens edition of TGIFF.  I've been distracted by other things finally finishing -- THANK GOODNESS! -- with my house this week.