Now that I’m doing a lot more quilting, I’m in need of a lot more quilt backs. I’ll be honest, I’ve been a fan of the 108″ wide quilt back fabric since it came out, but let’s back up a minute.

I have noticed that quilt backs are about as diverse as the quilting community is. There are those who want the back to coordinate with the front. There are those who want the back to be randomly pieced from leftover fabric from the quilt top. There are those who just really don’t care what is on the back of the quilt. I fall into the latter category. I’m trying to have a decent fabric on the back that will stand up to washing and after that I don’t have much of an opinion. I don’t care if it matches, and I’ve found lately I’m even going in the opposite direction, making sure the quilt back is about as different from the quilt as I can get it.

I also want it to be easy. I don’t want to spend as much time piecing the back as I did the front. I also don’t want to have to try to center the top on the back so that it is as regular as the quilt – again, way too much work for me. I do take the time to split 45″ wide fabric so that I have two seams across the back instead of one in the middle. That way I’m not folding the finished quilt where the seam sits, causing more wear, but outside of that I really don’t do much piecing at all on the back.

There’s also a technical reason I don’t like pieced backs all that much: the give is different. When you piece, the more pieces there are, the more give (or stretch) there is in the piece. If I insert a strip of pieced blocks in the middle of a quilt back, those are going to stretch in a very different manner than the large pieces of fabric above and below them. This can affect how that part of the back lays as it is quilted and how it looks. I know a lot of long arm quilters who aren’t bothered at all by this, but it’s yet another thing for me to manage while I’m working the whole quilt.

One of these days I really dream that I will have enough time to deal with all of this and make intricately pieced backs to go along with my quilt tops. It would get more fabric out of my stash and being used for sure. I will probably still take great delight in making the back clash a bit with the front, that’s like my own inside joke and that’s not going to change, but for now, 108″ wide backs get me across the finish line, let me focus on getting to know my CAD software better, and get more things out of the UFO pile so that’s where it is.

One of these days I will be confident enough in what I’m doing