Sashings/Backings: Redux

When last we left our intrepid quilter, it was with this virtual layout

and a battle cry upon her lips: "What I really need to do now is get serious with a ruler and the starched pieces."

So that's exactly what I did next, finding all the actual widths, creating new puzzle pieces, narrowing the vertical sashings, and extending blocks where needed. The outcome of that virtual design play:

To the cutting table!

A few stressful hours later, all the designs were cut to size. I hadn't added the 1/2" to any of my jotted notes, so every time I centered the ruler and applied the rotary cutter, it was preceded by at least two more checks that I was including the seam allowance (and a final, post-cut check just to assure myself one more time).

After measuring the "bunch of the 'awesome' dachshund fabric" I apparently thought I owned, I discovered there wouldn't be enough for all the horizontal sashes. No problem! I'll scatter in a few teal dachshund sashes for interest. First to be cut from the awesome dachshunds were the large borders. After that, 1-1/2" cuts for the sashings, and by the time I was done the only thing left of that fabric were the bits of fuzz trimmed from the raveled (from washing) edges. I've rarely had fabric cut so exact! Enough strips were cut from the teal doxie fabric to get 5 sashes, and...

To the sewing machine!

Dr. Seuss, meet "The Stars At Night". As I was sewing the sashing into the first column, an ugly truth popped into my head: I hadn't factored the vertical sashing into any of my maths. Those were going to have to be from the teal fabric too. How would that look? A change to the image on my MacBook to check, and...

...it would look stupid.

Ok. Scratch the 'awesome' horizontal sashes (into the Scrap Users System 1-1/2" container they go). Cut more 1-1/2" strips of the teal, and resume sewing.

Wraith helped. This crazy cat eschews any touch coming from hands (even those hands that raised him from a kitten just a few days old!), but goes crazy for full-footed back rubs and scritches from my toes.

Sure mom, you can have the foot pedal back, but it'll cost ya!

Once all the preliminary work was done, the designs went together very rapidly and in seemingly no time I had something on the actual design wall. It was time to see how those 'awesome' borders were going to look around everything.

Well--not awesome at all, and I really didn't need to 'audition' the remainder of the teal to see that was going to be my borders. (I did it anyway.)

Into the Scrap Users System 2-1/2" container the 'awesome' borders go. Now that the entire piece has been cut and the strips introduced to their containers, that fabric will get used sooner rather than later!

Six strips of 2-1/2" teal fabric later (leaving a 5"x40" piece, technically now scrap-sized and so no longer "sacred"), this is the result:

38" x 78".
The "This IS my lab coat" T-shirt was my most frequently worn of them all,
especially when I had to go to outlying labs to check and/or repair their equipment.

And the backing? At some point in my studio travels my eyes rested on this, hiding in plain sight:

In truth, it's a dark lump of carefully layered Ts. Easy to "not see".

and I remembered my original intention had been to use some of these shirt backs as the backing to this lap quilt.

I'm going to stick with that idea. It makes more sense than the cobbled-together-birds plan, especially since I have one more T-shirt front I want to put on the back: