Back to Gravity

I have finished quilting my Kira quilt.  It's really beautiful, but then I admit to being biased!

So now what?  I have many UFO's, and  decided to work on one of those.  I chose Gravity, because it is the closest to being finished!  I dug it out of the stack, and put it up on my design wall.  This is how far I was when I was actively working on this quilt--the top half, and the colored sections of the bottom:

  

I had all the gray parts cut and labeled, and needed to sew them to the rest.  I have been working on making the rows, and now I have the 3 bottom sections finished.  Two more seams and the bottom will be done!

Because this is such a BIG quilt, I'm going to try something new (for me.)  I'm going to sandwich the quilt in 2 sections (the top and the bottom) and quilt each section separately, and then attach the two halves together.  I saw a tutorial on how to do this.  It means hand sewing the batting and the seam on the backing.  I am not overly fond of hand sewing!  The batting can just be basted together with a herringbone or zigzag stitch, but the backing will be tedious to sew.  I hand stitched the back of the Bottled Rainbow quilt, and it took a long time. But I still think that will be easier than trying to stuff this monster through the throat of the sewing machine.  It will be interesting.  I will need to choose a somewhat busy fabric to camouflage the hand stitches.  I have been thinking of what to use for the backing fabric too.  Maybe a black with a white design, or maybe polka dots.  When I go to the quilt expo in Sept, I will look for a backing fabric.