This blog is primarily my customer's quilts (and maybe mine if I can ever get to them!). For family and misc. posts go to: http://www.outsideofquilting.blogspot.com/



Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Backing issues


Here are some very pretty quilts by a good customer....I don't think she reads my blog and I won't put her name here because I'm going to use these quilts to stress a point.  Always bring a longarm quilter a quilt backing that is AT LEAST 2 inches larger than the top on all 4 sides -- bigger is even better.  This customer usually does do that, for some reason she brought backings on 2 of these quilts that were not big enough...just barely the size of the top.  
I ended up doing this border design on this quilt, piano keys to the edge, so that she could trim the border in to fix the edges without messing up the quilting design, since the backing actually was shorter than the top in places, because of the way the quilt will pull in as it is quilted.  It's just dang hard to deal with out the extra fabric on the back.

I was really nervous on this one, too, the backing was minkee and the exact size of the top.  I didn't know how it was going to come out by the time I got to the bottom of the quilt.  So I left the outside borders of all the blocks plain in case the outside edges had to be trimmed in.  If I was okay at the end I planned to go back and put something into the borders, but as feared, I came up short at the bottom, since I left it unquilted she was able to go to the store and buy a little more fabric and add it to the one edge of the backing to bring it out far enough to keep the quilt even on top. 

This quilt was fine, as you can see the red backing on all the sides. 
There are a few things that really make what I do difficult, and the backs not being big enough is one of them.   

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