My right brained friend Pat volunteered to help me, her left brained friend. Little did she know that four hours later, we’d still be sitting on the floor with more to do! (Other quilter friends are really happy I didn’t ask them!)

This quilt is all about precision, with over 400 pieced triangles, many hundreds and hundreds of  intersections that must line up, and a pieced back that must line up with the front. Oh boy! Pat kindly put up with all my attention to detail after detail.

After carefully measuring the batting, and after spending hours on the spray-basting project, we discovered the batting wasn’t quite as long as the quilt top. Pat made all sorts of helpful suggestions: just cut off the end of the quilt, make the quilt into curtains for her husband’s truck, and put the quilt sideways on the backing- so what if the birds fly sideways on the back of the quilt?

Pat said I could share these ideas if I make sure to say she was joking. (You were joking, right?) Pat’s real suggestion, because she knows me: start over with a new piece of batting.  She’s right: I’d hate to settle for a 3″ strip of batting pasted on after all this effort.

So we measured it using the Pat Method. No measuring tapes this time. We rolled out the batting from the roll, over the backing fabric, and after visually confirming it was several inches longer, I cut it.

It went faster the second time- by now, we were quick and adept at crawling around like dogs on our hands and knees. Next: stitching a grid with water-soluble thread. Next after that: start quilting- on my little Bernina 155. That’s sure to be entertaining!