GarageDragon

I've (finally!!) finished the top of a quilt for my daughter, (inspired by Karla Alexander's Funky Curvy Rail, from her 'Stack a New Deck' book, mine is a watery theme, complete with many large appliqued fish), and now need to sandwich and quilt (and then bind, another question on that follows!).

I am backing it with some fleece she chose, and had planned on using flannel as a batting, but am now having second thoughts: does the regular batting serve any purpose in helping stop ravelling (there's a lot more ravelling going on with this quilt on the reverse side than on the last one I made - I guess because of all the pushing and pulling to get the top into my DSM to satin stitch the appliques on!)? This top has actually turned out better than I had hoped, so I would be gutted if it fell to bits in the near future! I am planning on FMQ (in a sort of loose stipple) - if I can manhandle the sandwich into the teeny harp of my DSM!

And binding: I was going to join two pieces of fleece to make it wide enough, sandwich and bind as normal, but am now wondering if I make the quilt only as wide as the fleece, I could potentially use the excess fabric on the pieced side (it has quite a wide border) to form the binding, by folding it over - would this work? What are the pitfalls of doing this? I know I would have to be REALLY careful with the sandwiching as there would be no room for error, but could it work?

Many, many thanks to all you lovely people, who helped me successfully through my first quilt - I hope you don't get fed up with my newbie questions!