A quick update on my meandering adventure. I decided to start near the centre of my quilt and move outwards in quadrants thanks to some of the comments above. My backing was wide enough for SID but there wasn't a ton of wiggle room to work with so I erred on the side of caution. After trimming, my smallest leftover backing strip was about 1" wide (and part of that was selvedge).
Before I started, I also did a bit more research and found this article by Dawn Cavanaugh of APQS:
https://www.apqs.com/quilting-the-qu...ats-in-a-word/
My favourite moment was reading the following paragraph:
"
Quilters get all hung up over some “rule” they once heard that decreed “meandering should not cross over itself.” I don’t know where that dictate came from, but it’s time that it stop scaring quilters from trying at all. If you start meandering your quilt and you happen to cross over a line or two—so what? Will the quilt be less warm? Will it fall apart? Will your son or daughter love it less? Of course not! Throw caution to the wind, and cross over a few more lines along the way. Then they become part of your own personal, one-of-a-kind design. Stop worrying that your quilting has to follow arbitrary rules. The only person you have to please is yourself, and the only rule truly worth following is the one that says, “Have fun!”"
I am happy to say the quilting is done. It's far from perfect but I don't think that really matters since I'm not planning on having it formally judged. Some things I learned:
1) Keeping a meandering line going for a long time is hard! I decided to do my own thing. I believe I will call it "the amoeba method" ("the coral approach" was a close runner-up). :-) I basically created little blobs of meander. I did not mark my designs in advance; I just went where the spirit moved me. Most of the time this worked really well for me, but see note 3 re: thread colour.
2) Sewing through the places where multiple seams converge is also hard (especially if you press to the side as I do), but if using the amoeba method, it can be made easier if you try to start your meander very close to there instead of waiting to trip over the convergence unexpectedly mid-meander. This can also serve as a landmark for rediscovering your starting point.
3) While choosing a thread that will "blend in" and not be too visible might work well for a finished product, it can be a bit hard to see when you're actually doing the work and have decided you want to be able to find the place where you started each amoebic blob. That being said, I like the fact that you can't really see my quilting stitches so I'm willing to put up with the extra challenge.
4) Crossing the lines is not such a big deal after all. Thanks, Dawn! Neither is misjudging your meander and ending up with a bigger space between lines than you wanted in a section - I have a couple of little circles that fill in those spaces reasonably neatly.
5) While I have often read that it is best not to use a solid fabric on the back if you are worried about the quality of your quilting, this concern can be mitigated if you match your bobbin thread colour reasonably well there. And it's totally okay not to have the top and bobbin thread be the same colour or brand (although I'm sure the experts will be able to offer advice on mixing and matching thread fibres and weight - I certainly will not presume to do so!).
6) Jigsaw puzzle boxes are exactly the same height as my sewing machine platform, and putting four of them against the back of my machine made moving my quilt so much easier. A great reason to keep at least some of the puzzles you have already finished!
7) Pin basting totally works for this method but you do have to be a bit mindful when working around them. Sometimes (maybe 5 or 6 times during this process) I would pull out the pins if they were getting in the way but mostly I just curved around them.
8) I think quilting is still my least favourite part of the whole process. I do find it rather tedious after the delights of seeing a quilt top transform from a vague idea to a finished product. I am also still a bit worried about the quilting step because most of the quilts I make are on the smaller side (so are reasonably manageable) but I think I would struggle with this if I had much more bulk I would have to shuffle around (i.e. a bed-sized quilt). However, I'm glad I did this and will probably try something similar again on a future project now that I have given something other than SID a go. :-)
I'm very grateful to all of you who chimed in here and gave me your tips and insights. Happy quilting, all!
P.S. I know I said this would be a quick update, but it isn't, really... thanks to anyone who makes it this far in my "meandering" post! :-)