Oooh Oooh...Baby Baby

After several days of not sewing, I finally got back in the groove today. Other things in life have taken up my evenings when I normally sew. Today has been wonderful.  The baby quilt is now backed and quilted and all in one piece.
I have read every day of Petite Design Co.'s 31 Days of Walking Foot Quilting. So I was ready to quilt this with my walking foot.   I started with the idea of straight lines - but where is the thingy that attaches to the walking foot to use as a guide?  Hmmmmmm.. so I tried it without it.  Ha ha.  I have some organic lines that aren't very straight.  Those run side to side on the quilt.  Then I crossed those with wavy lines from the top of each section to the bottom of the section.   Not bad, not bad at all.  See:

I also had to avoid quilting over the applique embroidery designs.   So there are some interesting lines in the quilting.  Ha ha.
I used leftover pieces along with some other pieces I had for the backing. I love the planned randomness of it.

That is straighter than it looks in the cropped picture.  There was an extra row of blocks (top center) that was leftover.  I had one extra piece of the yellow sashing, so I sewed it to a red strip and the cut those into sections the same length as the two extra blue blocks. I added extra strips of blue to it and made that row just above the bottom row.
How do I "plan" the backs?  I am glad someone asked that in an email. I take the section of the quilt and lay it face down on the floor.  Then I take the pieces I am hoping to use and put them together sort of like a jigsaw puzzle until I get something I like. Then I take a small section at a time to the sewing machine and start putting it together.  I always make the back pieces bigger than the top so I have some wiggle room.  I think it works pretty well.

Now I have to decide on binding.  I was thinking "red" but I have several pieces of leftover binding from various other quilts.  So I may make a scrappy binding.  What do you think?

Oh yes,  I am in the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy'sCreative Side.  My Quilt is number 280.  I would love it if you voted for me.