Measure Twice, Cut Once!

That's the old carpenter's adage.  My version of this would be "Measure at least once".  Which brings us to:

The Tale of the Too Short Backing
I was so excited to be working on Sweet Man's 'Grey is not a Color' quilt again that I forgot the basic rule of backing. You know the one that says it must be bigger than the front.   Most of the excitement stemmed from the fact I won the backing fabric in a blog giveaway!

 Yes, 10 yards of Riley Blake granite!!  The minute I saw the giveaway, I knew this was the fabric for me specifically for this quilt.  And of course, I was right.  The powers of the Universe must have agreed because it did indeed become mine. Which meant I needed to find the project bag and get this quilt done!

I love the color, a purple-y grey.  I measured four lengths for the four quarters of the quilt, chucked them in the washer/dryer and promptly packed them to go up to the Michigan house for my last visit's sandwiching session. 

Did you catch my error yet?  No, you say?  While it's true I measured the length, I NEVER checked the width!  I just assumed at least a minimum of 42" of usable width of fabric.  That's were I made my mistake.  Never Assume Anything!!  

So what's the big deal?  You just need to add a piece to the back of each quarter?  Yes, yes I could.  But the remaining hunk of backing fabric was: a) not washed; b) not in the same state I was in and c) nowhere near my sewing machine and unable to be attached before sandwiching.

Missing something? 

What's a quilter to do?  Sandwiching anyway, deal with it later!  I made sure the shortages fell on the outside edge of the quilt and that I had plenty of backing towards the middle seams since this is a quilt as you go project.

Orange tag = which quarter this is and the outside edge

The quilting is coming along. I am onto the fourth quarter this morning - running low on thread.  It amazes me how when using a variegated thread, the light part of the thread always seems to end up in the dark fabric blocks  and the dark part of the thread ends up in the light blocks.  In between, the medium values blend beautifully! 

The thread just sinks into the backing fabric.

I'll quilt as long as the thread holds out this morning and add the missing back parts. Then there will be errands to run and thread to hunt!  
Happy April Fool's Day!