Quilt-Along Update

After an extremely busy week and weekend, I have FINALLY finished piecing the back of the quilt for Kelly Young's My Quilt Infatuation Quilt-Along.  I still haven't pieced the front, but I should be done with that in a few days.  I had hoped to have both sides done by now, but my anniversary was last week and my husband's birthday and Father's Day were both this weekend.  Since this past weekend was all about him, my sewing machine didn't see much action.  My goal is to have both sides pieced and the quilt basted by the end of this coming weekend.  Of course, my daughter has swim lessons every evening for the next 2 weeks and my in-laws arrive on Thursday.  There should be plenty of time...or not.  I wouldn't hold your breath if I was you.

Enough lamenting over busy schedules...let's celebrate the small success of finishing a very important portion of this quilt.  I really love how the back turned out.  It's a clever way to use all the fabric scrapes after cutting up the bricks for the front and I hardly have any left over. 

I'll trim up the sides before I start quilting, but not until after I baste the quilt.  There's still 2 key decisions that have to be made in reference to this quilt.  First, what should I do for the quilting that will help showcase the front and back?  I only have straight-line quilting skills, so don't suggest any free-motion quilting solutions.  I've thought about quilting vertical lines so that it will add some contrast to the horizontal lines in the piecing of the fabrics.  I'm afraid the alignment of all the horizontal lines on the front and back may be a bit tedious.  I would hate for the back to be slightly off and cause the quilting to look sloppy.  My second decision deals with the color of the binding.  The fabric patterns are so busy and colorful, I think a solid color would work well for the binding.  The difficulty lies in the act of deciding which color to pull from the fabrics in the quilt.  Any suggestions?