Kaffe Circles Backing/Binding Prepared

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! I'm having a good time visiting family in Kansas City right now. It's been very hot and humid, but we're supposed to have a cooler stretch now. It's certainly a switch from the dry air at my house! I haven't been working on any of my projects while I'm here. I've been having a lot of pain at the base of my thumb, so I'm giving it a break. It feels a lot better already!

Before I left, I was able to prepare the backing and binding for my Kaffe Circles quilt. I usually incorporate my scraps into the backing of my quilts. This time, the only scraps I have are circles.

Kaffe Circles - Leftover Scraps

My first thought was to make a backing with a large piece of the solid and a couple of large pieces of Kaffe fabric, then scatter the circles on those. That would be a fun backing, but it would be a lot of work. I would probably have to applique the circles since it would be really hard to wrangle the larger pieces of fabric for inset circles. Especially since the leftover circles are smaller than the circles on the front. In the end, I decided to save the circles for another project and just use a single Kaffe fabric for the backing. I had a couple of fabrics in my stash with enough yardage to create the backing and I ended up choosing this blue pansy fabric.

Kaffe Circles - Backing Fabric

I really like this fabric (which is probably why I had so much yardage) and the little bits of background color that peek out between the flowers matches my solid fabric pretty well.

Kaffe Circles - Backing Background Color

Using the single fabric, I was able to get the backing prepared in just an hour or two. What a nice change from my usual backings! I also prepared the binding for this quilt.

Kaffe Circles - Binding

I'm trying to be better about preparing the backing and binding when I finish a quilt top so I don't have to store a pile of fabric scraps with the quilt while it waits to be quilted.

I was also able to make a little progress on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. 

La Passacaglia

I started attaching the units for the final partial round of the second large rosette. I had hoped to get this rosette finished, but my thumb was hurting too much to get very far on this. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this up when I get back!

And I continue to plug away at my Winter Vespers from Bernat. 

Winter Vespers

I still have to hold a needle to work on this, but it's not as painful as hand sewing so I can make progress on this when I get home if my thumb acts up again. 

Finally, I visited a new-to-me quilt shop here in Kansas City. It's called KC Maker Studio & Fabrics. I wanted to look for binding fabric for my Catsup & Mustard quilt, which has colors that I was having difficulty matching. I had heard that this was a large quilt shop and I was not disappointed! It was huge! And it was beautifully organized. They had fabrics galore, patterns everywhere, a huge selection of bag making supplies and everything you could think of in a quilt shop. I had brought a couple of spools of thread that matched the colors in my quilt pretty well and used those to find several fabrics that I thought would work for the binding. I purchased two possibilities and have my fingres crossed that one will work for me. I will definitely be visiting this shop again!

Nancy