either way is fine but if you are going to hand quilt you will want to reduce the bulk, or if you want it to be a light-weight quilt, but normally i think the background is left intact with dresden plates.

I'm doing a dresden FAN right now. Have to figure out what I'm gonna do for the border...plain borders just sounds so boring. Using floral fab for the blades with black for the background. Pretty dramatic!

Julie,
I would love to see picture of the fan quilt. Sound very interesting.

If you are machine quilting, leave it in. If you want to hand quilt, you will be glad you removed the extra bulk.

I have only made one dresden, and did cut the back away. Guess I just thought it was supposed to be done that way. (didn't want quilt police hanging around!) I did hand quilt. I'm sure it would have been more difficult to hand quilt if I had left it in. Sense I have never machine quilted a quilt, not sure how I would handle it in that respect.

I would only cut it if hand-quilting, but leave it in if machine quilting.

Thank you everyone so much, i appreciate all of your responses, and have just been so busy sewing trying to get this done on time, that i didnt have time to write back yet. I decided not to cut out the extra fabric, and tomorrow im going to be able to start quilting it...thanks so much :)