Well, this is a new one for me. I never questioned whether my backing was vertical or horizontal. I always just used it the best way it would fit. Hmmm.....don't sic the quilt police on me!

If it’s a wall hanging, I like the grain to run vertical for less sagging.

Gosh, I've never thought about it. I do vertical seams and my longarmer has never said anything about it.

For ever so long I always did the vertical seam and just dealt with the overage and additional scraps. Then on a HUGE quilt I went to a well known and very respected quilt shop and they calculated the amount of backing fabric I would need with both a horizontal and vertical seam.. Big difference in the amount of fabric and therefore cost. Since then I will often calculate the back both ways before making a purchase or cutting from existing stash fabric. A penny saved here is a penny for other fabric I may need later there. Right?!

My longarmer doesn't care which way the seams are. I've even given her quilts that I had pieced the backing together. She's never said anything to me about it. Perhaps the longarmers need the income and will quilt what ever we send them. Several ladies in my quilt club are making a ton of scrappy quilts to use up scraps and not buying fabric. Many of us piece the backings and have never had a longarmer reject them.

Thanks guys. I will just do it the easy way, then.

bk

Unless the quilt design has to be quilted vertically then the LA loads it the way it will be easier to quilt. Of course the better quality quilting set up will determine a lot too. I usually have two seams in my larger backings. I make a tube of the length I need of the backing then cut open making two seams.

My longarmers have never cared.

My personal feeling re: quilt police. The only ones in existence are in our own heads. There are lots of judgemental people though ;)

I only mount horizontal seams on my LA - but sometimes I rotate the quilt if I have a pattern that I want to run a specific direction. I also sew cross grain to long grain when I'm using up extra wide backing scraps. So far I've not run into any problems doing this. I'll sew shorter vertical (2-3' long) and that does not cause a problem. I used to be real particular, but I really wanted to get the backing scraps used up

I've been using up scraps the last several months, both for tops and backs. Sure is nice to clean up all those cut off pieces of backing.

BTW- my machine likes the top to be quite loose, so there is no tension on the fabric when stitching. I think that takes care of a lot of potential problems. With my first setup, that wasn't a true LA, the top had to be rather tight and mounting the backing sideways caused grief. I like being able to take the quilt off and rotate it for doing custom border designs.

Quilt police question.....
 

I don't know if you have ever looked at the book from Mary Katherine Fons. The quilt backs in the book, Make + Love Quilts has the backs going in all sorts of directions. Hope that makes the decision easier.