Shop Hop Marathon

Hi all,
For the past two days, I've been on the roads of Western PA visiting 11 quilt shops - up, in only two days.  My friend's new car has a LOT more miles on it now, and she has had lots of practice using her new GPS, too!  Happy to report that her new car is comfy and the a/c works great as temp both days was in the mid-90's!

This morning I poured out all my purchases and sorted into tools, patterns, small fabric precuts and fabric yardage.  I think there's enough here to keep me occupied well into next year.  I will not publish any additional incriminating evidence. ;-)

This afternoon, I'm going to The Quilting Grotto (my basement sewing & craft room) and quilt on a bunch of those Quilts 4 Kids quilts - and maybe play with my die cutter and lay out a journal page (or two) for June.

Watch for more pics as soon as those quilts are done - the tops are beautiful!  All from the same fabrics.

putting on the brakes - what to do when the quilt back is too short...

So yesterday, I thought I was making great headway on a little scrap quilt.  I had pieced the back according to "John's diagonal method" and thought I had plenty of backing under this little quilt.
I realized just in the nick of time that the backing was going to be about 4" shy of getting to the edge of the last border...  YIKES!!! how did that happen?  I had measured so carefully - this just could not be!

I checked again... yes, for sure, it would not reach. Just a few inches.

So, what did I do you ask?  (or maybe not...)  I stopped right there in the middle of the quilt.  I took the whole thing off the frame, and cut the existing backing fabric about 6 inches away from the quilting I had just finished - in a nice straight line.... well, okay, I confess - I actually TORE that strip off.  I had a 'short' piece left in the 'backings box' that was never going to back much of anything and I cut that in half to make a piece long enough to match the piece I had already torn off the quilt back, sewed those together and then added the new piece a little into the middle of the quilt back rather than just adding it to the edge.

Now it looks like I pieced the back this way intentionally, and here is a pic of the finished quilt

 yes, the binding is on it now... I used the dark teal/turquoise for the binding.  all done.  what's next?