Originally Posted by quiltingshorttimer

As a long armer who just had a bit of a problem backing I'm going to weigh in. First, I want all of you to grab a sheaf of papers, roll up 1/2 of them and put a rubber band on the middle (your seam), Now roll the 2-3 other pages around it--you'll notice that the outer pages will be loose on both ends because that rubber band creates a bulge in the middle. So when we get a back with 1+ seams all running the same direction, we'll load it so that those seams are parallel to the roller bars to prevent this. The back I just worked with had two parallel seams and then a shorter one where she pieced in another chunk of fabric. It probably would not have been much hassle except that the 2 parallel seamed pieces all had the grain going the same direction (length-wise) and the smaller chunk had grain on the width--so when I did some diagonal lines it pulled the bias much more on that one piece. Required lots of starch and steam to get it less flexible--but honestly anytime I've had any pucker in a backing it's been this situation where the piecing had been done with grain going several ways and seams going several ways. The reason this doesn't happen with pieced backs that include pieced blocks (orphan blocks, etc) but has the seams basically going the same way is that the smaller piecing does not have as much stretch.

Most of us can turn a quilt to the side and still get the pattern desired so that is not any problem. (although if you want any writing in the quilt, that is a little trickier!)