My heart will be with you on Friday, Iceblossom. It is so hard to lose a loving pet, but we don't want them to suffer just so we can have them with us a little longer.
I finished up the baby quilt top, and that one is ready for the longarm. My sunflower fabric came from fabric.com yesterday afternoon. Can't say I love it, the backing is pretty awful, in my opinion, but the quilt is not for me, so my opinion doesn't matter. The companion fabric for the front is fine, but I had a heck of a time finding coordinating fabric in my stash. I finally found a yellow I forgot I had, a small amount of green, and a brown that works for 9 patches, then the sunflowers will be alternating. I had 2" of brown to spare, so no narrow border with it, as I had planned.
That is a neat idea for piecing backing, may have to try that sometime.