Extended Checkered Has Started

One of my Spring goals is to complete this Extended Checkered quilt. It's a basic rectangle blocked quilt top using two different colors in the center and binding. I don't have anyone in mind for this quilt either.  But I really wanted to use the blue print fabric I had.  I didn't have much of it, a little over a yard, and the print was very nice.  I wanted to create simple that would showcase the fabric.

The quilt top design:

Keeping it simple to showcase the fabrics.  

The quilt backing.  I used a white Muslim 100% cotton fabric for the majority of the backing.  I used a little bit of the quilt front fabric for the backing.

Keeping the back of the quilt simple also.  I ran out of the blue fabric so I tried to use what was left of it for the back - not much left :).

I pieced together the quilt top and bottom a couple of days ago.  It is all ironed and ready for the basting.  I used Warm & Natural 100% cotton batting.  The quilt is about 53"x73" so I had to clear out my entire living room floor to make room.  Lay the batting on flat on the floor - enough for the quilt top and then some.  Then put the quilt top on top of the batting and SMOOTH SMOOTH SMOOTH.  Make sure you smooth from the middle out to all the edges.  This takes a bit of time, but it's a very important step. 

Pictures is the smoothing process.  As you could see here, it's not enough to just put the quilt top on the batting.  If you don't take the time to smooth out this process, you're going to have a lot of tugging during the quilting process.  As you could see here there's still a lot of bumps to smooth out.

Once again I'm out of time for my projects.  This is a good stopping point because the smoothed out batting and quilting top needs to be rolled up anyways.  It'll be rolled up and ready to put the quilt backing on next time I have time to work on this - again I need to clear out my living room floor again :).