Thankyou Tartan, Jingle and cathyvv, I appreciate your advice and opinions and think I will just "sail forth" and see how it goes. I've been looking at some placemats and table centre mats which I quilted the same way and I never gave a thought to which direction my backings were as they were bits of leftover fabrics I wanted to use up. The quilting turned out fine so maybe I am worrying for nothing. Thanks again for the "hand holding"!!