Originally Posted by
PaperPrincess
If you aren't often going to see the back, like a bed quilt, wall hanging or table topper, I use muslin. You can get muslin in wide widths.
This is sort of my philosophy about using muslin. Especially on king-size quilts I'm making for myself...I go all out on the fabric for the front and save as much as I can for the back.
Originally Posted by
dunster
Why do you say the back shouldn't be scrappy? I sometimes use wide backs, sometimes use 45" fabric, but most of the time I use up scraps that were left over from making the front.
I like scrappy backs too...my rule of thumb is that if I have to piece a back out of 45" fabric anyway, I'm usually going to throw something interesting into that seam, especially if it's a scrappy quilt (which most of mine are). A row of blocks using fabric from the front, or a strip of left over border fabric...whatever gets in the way gets thrown into that spot. And then sometimes I get a bug and decide to slice through the back again going in another direction and add another strip of "whatever". Kinda depends on how much I like the backing fabric, how much front-fabric I have left, what sort of mood I'm in, and how much of a hurry I'm in!
I've done fully pieced backs and I didn't like how I ended up with so many lumps where intersections from the front matched up with intersections on the back - it made it hard to quilt. My FMQ is amateurish enough without extra lumps in the quilt making it jag off to the side! If I pressed my seams open that would probably be less of a problem but I'm far too lazy for that.