Thinking Outside the Box!

I have 2 king sized quilt tops to quilt, but am waiting for some batting to be shipped.  So, while my Millineum is idle for a few days I decided to put some miles on my Bernina.  I bought this flannel kit early this spring (on sale!) and it's been sitting there on my shelf all this time.  I have a love/hate relationship with kits.  I love the fact that someone else has already done my fabric shopping, but hate it when they make a mistake on the yardage.  So this is where I had to get creative.  As my 8 year old Granddaughter, Jordan, says, "Grandma, you have to think outside the box!"

The pattern was strips cut from 45" fabric and there was hardly a fraction left over.  Now, many of us know that actual 45" fabric hardly exists anymore and then you still have to subtract the 1 inch selvages.  Today's 45" fabric really measures somewhere between 40 and 42 inches.  So, I had to downsize the blocks 1/2 inch to begin with.  No problem.

Close up of quilting.
Edge to edge freehand swirls gives it lots of texture--flannel front and back.

After I got the top pieced, I took out the backing fabric.  This quilt was 50 x 50 and my little handy dandy fabric calculator told me I needed 3-1/4 yard of fabric to piece for the backing.  Hmm.....I only see 2-1/2 yards. . . and I need an additional 16-18 inches for the binding!  . . . hmm . . . thinking outside the box . . .

So, I dig through all the leftover scraps to see what I can come up with to make this work.  I refuse to even look online to find more matching fabric.  I figured if I took the backing yardage and put in a 10 inch splice to make it wide enough, then I will have just enough width to make the backing and have just enough length left to make the binding.  First, I tried to come up with enough scraps for a pieced binding, but the width and length of my scraps didn't lend themselves to that; and I still would not have enough backing . . . outside the box  . . .

So, here is what I came up with . . . it's a "Design Element!"

Close up of back.

 

I carefully quilted this with only one inch of backing on either side of the quilt sandwich.

 . . . and look at all this I had left!

Thanks Jordan~  For reminding grandma to think outside the box!