Linda Campbell's Snow Tractors Quilt - Finished 03/30/2012

I am expecting 3 guests tomorrow when Diana Trivette comes to pick up her quilts. Linda Campbell is Diana's niece and my very first customer. She is coming with Diana and bringing her mother, Betty. I understand Linda has two quilts of her own for me to do. Will post pictures when I get them. This is the second of the two.
Feb 27: Linda wanted white on top and back until I found pale shade of blue called Water Lily which matches Light Turquoise for the back. She knows she wants a detailed border (I found a tractor border after she left) and a panto for the middle. We are stumped on what to use for now. Adorable fabric! This will be so much fun to do. While I can find tractors and bulldozers, etc., it finally dawned on me DUH these are tractors moving snow. I think I will put Sandy to work on an original design. And...she said YES to doing it.
Mar 16: Sandy & I have been working on the IQ design all week. I think we now have a plan. Note: Linda made her quilt top side borders 50% wider than her top and bottom borders which is why we are letting the snow spill over on the sides to make up the difference. If the diagram is any indication, this seems to work just fine.
Mar 28: I had a bit of a time trying to figure out how to deal with this backing with a border since they were not even all the way around & the quilt top needed to be centered more or less with the back. I hope I got it right! That is what has taken me so long to begin loading. Loading the quilt now. Loaded at 9:45 PM. Had to align the top and backing. I can only hope it will be straight enough.
Mar 29: I am going to do something different when quilting this. Since it is custom quilting & the side borders are complex (not easy to split every 15 inches/roll of the quilt), I am going to quilt the top border, the center row by row and then the bottom border. I will then unload the quilt and turn it sideways, reload and do the two side borders. This may change the way I do custom borders from here on. We shall see.
  Just now posted first pictures. I have been working on this for hours with nothing to show for it as I fine tuned exactly where the pattern would sew on the quilt. Custom work is painstaking work to be sure but usually worth the effort.
   Got the top border and 4 of 6 rows done on the center.
Mar 30: Finished! (last two rows of the center and the side borders.