Butterflywing- I reread my post and it sounded kind of confusing. It's like kankan01 said about the backing coming to the front and making a sashing. The back is a solid piece of fabric (that needs to coordinate with the front) I finished one just before the New Year and ended up liking the back better--that is why I want to figure out a way to make it so the front doesn't have sashing. Does that make sense?
The template just makes it easy to center the batting. I didn't use it to cut the back or batting