Calendar Cascade :: Next Steps

Back last January when the Calendar Cascade BOM began and I heard the final dimension of the quilt - 70" x 92" - I knew I'd probably ask someone to quilt it for me. At this stage, anything close to 90" is more than I want to deal with. So once my quilt top was done, I contacted my friend Dionne Hersh @dinglebobbins, and happily, she was willing to do the quilting for me, so we made an appointment to meet up.

Meanwhile, I needed to make a quilt back! For long-arming purposes, it needed to be 78" x 102", and after getting Dionne's OK, I dove into making a pieced quilt back. I began by piecing leftover quilt blocks and scraps and putting them up on the design wall.

And that process just continued, making it up as I went.

When the smaller scraps started running low, I began adding in larger solid pieces and swaths of fabric from my original fabric pull.

At some point I did need to grab a couple of larger coordinating pieces from stash, though I did cut and set aside binding strips from the original pull before using what I did on the back. It was close, but I made it! The back was too big to get a decent picture, but you get the gist from the photo below.

So I was able to drop the quilt top and back off with Dionne last week, and we spent a time deciding on a quilting design, batting, and thread. After auditioning quite a few, the design we both agreed would be a good choice was Modern Twist X3, stretched horizontally a bit. It was great that with Dionne's quilting software, we could lay the design over the quilt top and adjust the scale. With that capability, we were able to choose a density we both liked.

I decided to go with Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly blend batting, and for thread, Fil-Tec Glide polyester in Clover 60577.

So yes, I'm pretty excited that the big step of quilting Calendar Cascade is now in Dionne's capable hands. One day soon I'll be back with a finished quilt to share!