Purchasing 108" backing fabric for your front sashing.
 

Does anyone purchase quilt backs to use for their sashing in front. When I want something other than plain white, I have taken to look and see what is available in quilt backing. Do any of you do this?

No, I use regular 44" quilting fabric for sashing. I've always found widebacks to be very limited in colors and styles, not to mention the cost and what a pain it is to wrangle that much fabric in washing, pressing, cutting, etc.

What do you find to be the advantage in using wideback for sashing?

That's one of the ways I use my backing scraps. If the scrap is big enough, I've used it for binding or borders,
too.

Mostly when I would like a solid like fabric with some texture to it. Especially in the light cream color. Actually, I should say for background fabric even more so. The grunge fabric would be one. Also a white on white or cream on white fabric with a small flower or leaf design as examples.

When I need to buy fabric the first thing I look for is the wide backing selections. I find that it can be so much cheaper than buying enough of the regular width. I have used the wide fabric for my piecing, for sashing, for binding, and wait for it, also backing sometimes on the same quilt, and sometimes spreading that wide piece though several quilts.

I have been using a lot of white lately, and actually just recently bought a few yards of 120" backing in snow white. I'll be using it in multiple quilts. When good fabric is at times over 10.00 a yard for a 44" piece, I will definitely pay 12 or 14.00 a yard for a wide piece. $14 for one yard of wide fabric is a lot better than $20 or $30 for for 2 or 3 yards of 44" fabric.

Keepsake Quilting has a very large selection of 108" wide fabrics, either by the yard or in 3-yard bundles. Prices are good. I like the options of using wide fabrics for backing, for sashing, in blocks, so many choices.

I use the excess backing for piecing in other projects. So using it for sashing would be no problem for me

Right now, I am using wide back fabric for piecing a rolling waves top. It was much more economical since the pattern called for 6 yards for this colour. I do always wash it first, and have found it is easier to work with if I cut off a section--in this case, just over 14 inches at a time, which multiplies well with the size of the pieces needed.

I purchase wide backs and use the extra as blender fabrics on the front. No problems.

I used a batik backing for a paper pieced star quilt I did, It was the perfect colors for the border, I also used it for the backing. You might want to consider, washing the backing before using it in a pieced quilt as I have had some backings shrink quite a bit, some don't, some do. I now mostly use yardage because of quality issues in the backings and I have found it hard to tell the quality sometimes as it seems some of them use more stiffeners in them. Maybe if I had used more of them, I would know which ones to get and which ones to avoid.