George's got back

I am remembering once again why I dislike making quilt backings so very, very much. I had several pieces of George's batiks left over and I figured out that I could cut them into the perfect size for flying geese that would be exactly the width of two of my HST blocks. Making the geese was the easy part.

I decided that there would be a vertical row of the flying geese, offset to the right of center, and a horizontal row of the leftover HSTs, placed below center, and the rest just the same white Kona cotton I used in the HST blocks. This involved math. Math, and cutting several hundred yards of fabric into pieces just the right size. I have not yet figured out a good way to cut a length of yardage that must end up being longer than my ruler or my cutting table, and the best I have come up with so far is to incrementally stretch it across the ruler until I have roughly the length I need, plus a few extra feet for safety, and then tear it. My sister's promise that a good fabric will tear straight along the grain line seems to be pretty much true, and so I've been able to get rough estimates of what I actually need, but as I said, I add extra just in case, and then after I sew it there's several inches more on one piece than the other. Do I tear that? It's still longer than the cutting table. Do I absolutely have to make the back perfectly square? Shouldn't I get extra points from the longarmer since the back is actually twice as big as the front even if there are no straight lines at the edges?

And of course I calculated that I would need approximately 867 yards of the Kona, and it turns out I actually need 873. I wonder if I could by stock in Robert Kaufman Fabrics? They could at least send me a coupon or something, for singlehandedly keeping them in business.

Harper feels that her quilt needs have been ignored long enough, and I have been charged with making both a Halloween quilt and a Christmas quilt. I had an old Halloween-themed jelly roll lying about, and I bought that Christmas layer cake in Nashville, so it will be impossible to claim fabric poverty. A friend wants me to make her a Kindle cover, and I need to make a gift for Devon's former daycare provider. I want to make something for David's brother and sister-in-law, for their hospitality when we were in Kentucky, plus I have long had plans for quilts for each of them, plus ones for each of their daughters. I have a quilt for Devon that I started quilting myself that needs to be finished. I decided that my Plane Ticket Benefactor's quilt is much too small, and I'm trying to figure out how to save it. I am rich in projects and poor in time. Which is better than the other way around, I suppose.