Lucky - Ready to Wash!

After quilting what I'm calling my Happy Go Lucky quilt, I started on the long and disappointing process of choosing a material for binding. My hope was to find something in the purple/lavender spectrum - but no luck. I always thought blues were supposed to be the most challenging colors to match, but after the last few days I'm thinking it might be purples!

So, when failure met me at every turn, I started looking for yardage of the Good Fortune fabric line (the charm pack I used in the top). It didn't take much looking to learn that these fabrics are on their way out. Shopping online, I had about three options - none of which were quite what I had in mind. I left my browser open to the best of the three, and set out to check my local shops for any yardage - starting at my favorite place.

Where I had success. Whew! Alright, it wasn't quite what I'd have chosen if I had a pick of every piece in the line... but it would have been my third choice, so I think that's still pretty good...

The aqua floral isn't a great match with the back (you can see why I was leaning toward lavender), but it's not bad either.

It looks better against the front - although I still think purple or lavender would have been a better fit, and I would love to at least had an option of looking at a different print. (Most of what was left in my favorite store was of the green and/or coral variety - which would certainly not have worked with the back.)

I'm still just drooling over this one. Although I'm usually big on a quilt not being finished until it's been washed, I'm hesitating to drop it in the wash. Partly because, despite pre-washing the backing fabric, I am a little worried about colors running (I don't think I've ever worked with this much white before). And partly because I love it so much just how it is, I'm not sure if washing it will improve it or not... Since there's no one lined up to get it (in fact, I'm leaning strongly towards keeping this one), I'm in no rush to decide to wash it. I think I'll let it hang out and decorate the house for a while first - and get around to washing it in a little bit.

Probably...