One of the most important factors in quilting on a longarm machine is having enough fabric to attach the whole thing evenly with room for testing stitch tension. That's why I ask customers to make sure they get backing and batting that is 4 inches wider and 4 inches longer than the quilt top.
Patty had already cut a backing piece that was roughly the same width as her quilt top and she was going to try quilting it herself on her home sewing machine, so she prepped it with safety pins holding the "sandwich" of back/batt/top together. Then she ran out of time.
She unpinned it all at my request, because each part of the sandwich needs to be pinned onto the machine separately. But she she had already cut the backing fabric.
To get the extra four inches, she used some of the left over fabric from the top (a sweet design by Elizabeth Hartman called Frames), Patty sliced the back into two pieces and sewed a 4.5-inch strip of the leftover print from top to bottom to each backing segment -- making a more interesting back for the quilt.
Patty asked me to quilt it all together with a design called "Labyrinth." She'll be finishing it with a yellow polka-dotted flannel binding in time for the birth of her first grandchild.
Sweet.