Its about time I had something on the wall!

Ahh, Design Wall Monday time and I actually have something on the wall! OK, so its been there since last week and I just didn't have time to post it, cut me some slack, the kids just went back to school today. The only time I have had to sew since getting back from out west was the Friday the kids were at my MIL's house for a few days. I finished a wall hanging and sewed the two appliqued borders I finished this summer onto their quilt top and then began piecing the backing for that quilt top with the very last of the left overs. I think I will make the binding next so I can see if there is any left over fabric from that I can throw into this backing. So this is the finished top (can I get a huge hip hip horay since I've spent two summers sewing the borders for this one... the top itself only took me a couple of weeks!)

close up of the borders

The backing for this quilt is what is actually up there on the design wall. The little squares are left overs from the jelly roll I made the quilt with. The brown stripe is not part of the fabric line, but has all the same colors. I plan to bind it in the green dot that the flowers stems are made of and there should be some of that left to work in there too. The rest of the backing will be WOW. The one blue solid square in the middle of this photo is actually the design wall showing through. That will be a piece of plain white with the label information on it. I may get a little crazy and applique a left over flower in there...just because I am not yet completely OVER appliqueing these flowers and especially the four leaves that go with them... really, I'm not! (insert eye roll here). After all there are only 80 of those leaves on each of the 4 borders!

I am also contemplating how to quilt this and if I should wash it gently before quilting. See, I had myself a little (unwise) experiment while marking one of the borders for flower and leaf placement. I used a washable Crayola marker (it is washable right?) and now I am worried sick that the marker is not going to come out, or it will sort of come out but not completely. I am anxious to see if it will come out and not sure I want to wait until it is quilted. What would you do (besides not use markers on your quilt in the first place)?

Have an excellent week. I am off to frost the birthday cupcakes for my newly minted 4 year old 'baby' girl (one day late - we were too busy having fun yesterday with presents and jumpy places to worry about cupcakes!).