Quilting Again

In early June I was focused on the garden so I didn’t quilt or blog much.  Hurting my back while focusing on the garden stole the last couple of weeks of the month.  This weekend I finally felt like my usual self again but steered clear of gardening and visited the sewing machine instead.
Since Canada Day was on Sunday it seemed appropriate to work on my “Canada Quilt”.  I hope I’ll find a better name for it eventually but in the meantime I finally gave it borders.

Most of the fabric is “Greetings from Canada” by Thimbleberries.  The log cabin block centers were fussy cut from a print of postcards from various landmarks, one for each province.  The lighthouse and sailing ship represent Canada’s coasts, there are a delectable mountains block for the Rockies, wheat blocks for the Prairies, pine trees for the forests, and I’m saying the flying geese borders are Canada geese.  Of course I needed maple leaf blocks in there as well!
The strip to the right of the quilt top will go on the back. I don’t have quite enough of the backing fabric I bought last summer.  It is just long enough, but not wide enough, so I will cut it lengthwise and insert this pieced strip to make the backing wide enough.

This is the backing fabric.  The flowers are the provincial flowers of Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories.
Now I need to take a deep breath and try to make a straight 68 inch long cut!  I’m procrastinating, even making my binding first.I usually never get around to making the binding until I’m ready to put it on.
Once I do that, this quilt will go back into its bin to wait its turn for hand quilting.  Whimsy is only about one third quilted, and it is just too hot here these days to want to sit under a mass of quilt to move it along.  I’m guessing that I’ll start quilting the Canada Quilt next winter sometime.