A gentleman in my quilt guild just did a trunk show of his quilts and he uses all sorts of things for his backing, many not related to the front. And he finds most of them at thrift shops, garage sales, etc. Cotton napkins, handkerchiefs, panels, etc. Very creative and fun.

this gorgeous and love your tote.

Either look at images on Google or Pinterest but not one quilt will look the same. Start laying them down on the floor or a design wall and just play for a while, then walk away. Come back refreshed and give it a go until you get something that is pleasing to your eye. use squares or flying geese to plug up the space between blocks of different sizes. Good luck and have fun!

I love pieced backings but I am wondering what LAQ's think about them? Do they find pieced backs cumbersome since they have to be more careful lining them up on their machines? What about all those seams? I always have my quilts quilted by a professional LAQ and usually use yardage or, if I can find it reasonably priced, backing fabric. I would love to play around with different ideas for my quilt backs.

That quilt is gorgeous! Love the colors and the matching tote. Is there a pattern for this or was this an original design?

It is called Creative Quilt Backs on Www.craftsy.com
and it is Free!

It all depends on your longarmer. I have done loads of quilts where the backing was pieced more intricately. It takes some extra time and measuring to load things up to get the backing centered properly and I always warn my clients that it may be off a few inches, especially from top to bottom. Side to side is relatively easy to center. Most pieced backings aren't that intricate or critical. Some LAQ won't work with heavily pieced backings and others don't mind them. Some longarm machines balk at the bulk of all those seam allowances, mine does not. Finally if your backing isn't nice and square it makes it very difficult to load correctly and is pain to keep level if their setup does not have a deadbar. So it all depends on your quilter and how their machine handles things.

Here are links to several quilts I have done on my LA that were double sided:

http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...t-t258728.html

http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...t-t209647.html

http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...t-t200665.html

http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...rm-t77776.html

Thanks ladies! I just wanted to show her what could be done.

The tote is called MacDuff. I've made it so many times that now I play with piecing the fabric to give it a scrappy look.

Thanks so much for all the help. I knew I could count on quilting board members. Why the craftsy class didn't show up with my search is a mystery.

I went here & took the lesson. She has a lot of good pointers.

http://www.craftsy.com/search?query=...ryUrl=quilting

I have only made one quilt with something extra on the back & had a problem of getting the back piece to be the same distance from the edge of the quilt all the way down. So when I quilted it the back piece was off kilter some. It bothered me but I never pointed it out to the receipient & am sure it didn't bother her. If I hadn't quilted it with the stitch in the ditch method & used an overall stippling or something similar I don't think it would have showed up as off at all. Here's a pic of the back. The pic of the back doesn't really show how much off the strip is but when I quilted down the edge of the border you could see the how it was off some. Lessons learned...don't put it so
close to the border.