I always cut my batting bigger than the quilt top, and cut my backing bigger than the batting. Then I fold up (twice) the excess backing over the batting and onto the quilt edges and hand-baste with long running stitches to enclose the whole quilt so I get no batting lint or thread ravels from the edges of the fabrics. Then I can quilt from the center out without a problem and only open up the basted edges to quilt when I get that far.
I don't do machine quilting except for SID, so I don't know if this procedure would work for those of you who do, but it works for me. Just a thought which might be useful to some of you.