Pieced backings
 

I've become intrigued with tutorials on pieced backings lately. I make a lot of baby quilts, usually about 46 to 48 inches wide. I've been frustrated over having to piece in a skinny strip of the backing fabric in order to make it wide enough, and am realizing it's much more fun to do something creative on the back. Today I finished quilting a baby quilt on my DSM that has my first-ever creatively-pieced back. I used a couple blocks from the front, bordered them with leftovers from the front piano keyboard border, and inserted them in the back. Voila! Art!

sounds fabulous! no reason why you shouldn't enjoy the process from beginning to end (or front to back)!

Piecing the back adds a lot more variety to the quilt, almost like having a reversible quilt.

If you want to use a single fabric for your backs, especially for baby quilts, I highly recommend the diagonal seam method. It requires the minimum amount of your single fabric. Baby quilts are the ideal practice place for trying this method out. Here is a good calculator: https://jinnybeyer.com/wp-content/up...-Worksheet.pdf

I'm really getting into pieced backs. Great place to use up the leftover fabric

wesing, thank you for the link and will keep this for the next set of small quilts I am making. I am trying to get as much fabric out of here by making toddler sized utility quilts.

I love pieced backs. I went to college in Interior Design. If there was something in the room that was an obstacle or in a strange place such as a column in the center of the room, we were taught to make it become an asset. Add more columns to make it look intentional. The seam on the back is the same, a great place to change it up and add interest. Rather than a skinny inset, make it a wide inset.

I piece the backing fabric sometimes. I think it looks great when it's quilted. It also uses extra fabric instead of putting the left-over fabric back in my stash. I did this on the back of a baby quilt because I didn't have enough of one fabric for the backing but combining the remaining fabric worked for it.

Your quilt is so neat and kid friendly.

Anyone have problems with picking the backing when the quilting is going to be done on a DSM? My concerns: my backing is never very straight when I baste my quilt in the limited space I have available and those extra (and hidden!) seams to quilt over.

I've been doing more and more "noticeably" pieced backs over the years. Back in the day, extra wide fabric wasn't easily found. I seem to be unable to design a top that easily fits on anything but an extra wide back...

One solution is to offset the seams/don't make it follow the top. You can do some really cool stuff that takes a lot of time and patience to match seams, in which case I'd probably recommend a more quilt as you go approach.

You also don't want seams right down the middle or in regular fold places for a number of reasons. So back in the day, the advice was if you needed two widths of fabrics, you had a full width down the center, and then you split the other in half long wise, and put each side on the center, so 2 seams/3 pieces of fabric.

Here's a couple of my pieced backs of different design/resource reasons.

The first one doesn't look like much, but was a border print and I had to be really exact with the sizing and such to get the print right and the top on the borders right.

The second was my first heavily pieced back. Top is cats from a the McCalls cat quilt block swap.

The next is for my current Bonnie Hunter project, I had 6 yards of fabric in my stash which was enough length but not enough width, so I added the bars of colors (from the back and used on the top) to extend. Bars were deliberately different widths to help avoid landing on seam lines of the top.

Last is one of my favorite back solutions using two very different fabrics. It isn't quite what I wanted, but close enough and I'm happy with it. The basic thing is that everything is offset, so it doesn't have to match anything on the front.

I've made several pieced backs with success except for one. I used a fabric I didn't like and every time I see it I say ugh to myself!
Never again. In fact I now refuse to use any fabric in anything unless I really like it.

I had thought of piecing the backs but wondered how to keep them centered and straight on a long arm. There must be a trick since I see it done often. I am talking about large quilts like queen size. I think baby quilts would be easier.

I love the last backing, but would probably use it on the front instead!

I frequently will add a row of additional blocks from the front. No extras from the front? I make a row of coordinating colored 9 patches from my stash of 2.5" squares. Result....interesting back and fewer 2.5's in my stash!! :)

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I've done a lot of pieced backing just to diminish the stash. Iceblossom, #1 will prove a useful idea. Thanks to everyone for posting.

Thanks, QuiltMom2 :) that was a thrift store purchase 4 yards of border print to back a completed thrift store top UFO baby blank that was just a bit bigger than regular yardage. Purchases made years apart, but put together nicely.

I should mention that when piecing the large pieces, I use my usual small stitches and press open. I remove selvedges but have 1/2" seams. When I incorporate blocks, those are usually the standard 1/4". The cat quilt has been in use for a number of years and is holding up well.

This is another border print/thrift store print. I'm not sure if there is any cotton in in at all, but it reminded me of a particular favorite sundress I had back in the early 80s or so :) It is a lot easier with border prints if you can match them down the middle! In this case I did have to match the design and those little stripes carefully and I haven't yet trimmed down the super-wide selvedge. I'm forgetting right now if there is any cotton content at all, but it feels rather nice if flimsy. It will either hold up forever or disintegrate rapidly... But it amuses me and it will be a quilt I keep. Quilt is "Not Quite Y2K" and is made up of something like 720 Y2K squares that I put together around 2020. Not quite 2000 in many ways!

Sometimes I just don't have a backing that works for the quilt so I've also used orphan blocks or cutoffs to make new blocks for the back. I've also used them to extend the size of the quilt like in my borders. Here's one I've done. Used some of the cutoffs to make diamonds along the border and cutoffs to make pinwheels on the back side. Even used the last of the scraps to make a stuffed elephant to go with it as that was her theme for her new baby boy.

Thanks to everyone on this thread for posting your experiences with pieced backings. I am more or less following a pattern for a baby quilt and bought the recommended yardage for a backing and it is just barely enough using a diagonal seam (I need 2.98 yards and bought 3). And I’ve never done the diagonal seam backing before, so was considering adding piecing.

But I soldiered through the diagonal seam with great success. I was even able to match the pattern in my fabric, which was shocking given, again, I had no extra. Photo of my diagonal seam attached.

For me, a pieced backing will have to wait for another quilt.

I like piecing backings I have 2 that are in my UFO bin that need finishing. The backs are already pieced to perfection I just have to get them done. I have one on my bed that has a pieced backing and the design on the back makes it pop! Enjoy the process!

I love pieced backings for all the reasons described above, but honestly, once I’ve finished piecing the front, I’m often not in the mood to spend more time on it, and want to get to the quilting as quick as possible.

So sometimes, I’ll piece the back BEFORE the front! I’ll take a length of backing fabric, co-ordinating scraps and orphan blocks from stash, and fashion something.

Then I still have excitement to make the actual quilt top, and can breathe a sigh of relief when the top is done.

This is a great idea. I have lots of orphans and usually make my quilts no bigger than 70" x 70". So I'm thinking of making several backs in advance. Thanks for the idea!

What's kept me from trying this is the likelihood that the design will be wonky when sandwiched. Is there some clever way of centering it or keeping it kind of straight?

hugs,
charlotte

It’s not really clever, but you just make a backing that’s not designed to be centered or symmetrical!

for example, I’ve done a backing that’s solid, but has a strip of orphan blocks about a third of the way from the edge. It’s obvious it’s not meant to be centered, but a few inches this way or that won’t make a difference.

I don’t try to make it a reversible quilt, just add some interest (and economy) to the back.