If you have it quilted by someone with a longarm the sheets are a much denser weave and harder to quilt.

I find lovely quilts at thrift stores and use them all the time for backing. Be sure they are cotton. Good luck.

I also use backing from Connecting Threads. Theirs is excellent for special quilts.

I have a Bernina 450 and love it. But I have heard complaints about bugs in the 830.

Very good question, I was about to ask it by myself. I always wondered if there was a really good reason for spending a lot of money in a totally white quilting fabric (since here in Spain the prices of patchwork fabrics are very very high).

Last month, I was in a warehouse looking for a special deco material and suddenly I saw a pile of very good quality (pure cotton) white fabric for bed sheets. The size was enormous and they sold it by weight, so it was very cheap! Some of them had a little (unnoticeable) blemish, but I'm going to cut it anyway for using as backgrounds, so I think I did a master purchase :)

I have not had any problem with them and I really like the look and the feel so, after reading your opinions, I think I will never go back. Now I keep my money for prints!

I think that most of the "don't use sheets' talk came about because back-in-the-day good sheets were percale and not necessarily a high thread count, but had a VERY hard finish to it (similar to polished cotton). It is extremely difficult to find percale anymore, so using the muslin sheets today are no problem (even with a 180-300 thread count).

Okay, so I've decided I am definitely going to use the two sheets I bought, probably the 180 thread count instead of the 200. The only problem I have now is making that first cut into a pristine sheet, even though I bought them with quilting in mind. So difficult :D:D