Hi welcome to the Final Stitch. I’m your
host, Natalie from Missouri Star Quilt Company. And today we’re going to be talking about
backing. So we’ve gotten a bunch of questions about backing from quilters like you. And
we’ve gathered them together and we have some answers. So let’s start with our first
question. Q: Ok so our first question comes from Christine
in Utah. She says, “When you talk about how much backing you’ll need for quilts
and say something like 5 ½ yards, how do I actually piece that together for my backing?” Natalie: Ok so typically when we suggest a
yardage amount on a pattern we’re talking about 45 inch wide fabric. And that would
just be your standard quilter’s cotton that you buy on the yard or by the yard on the
bolt. And it’s what you would buy for border, backing, binding. It’s 45 inches wide. So
when we say 5 ¾ yards or six yards, typically what we mean for is to take that whole length
and fold it in half. And I’ll show you that right here. We’ve got this pieced just as
an example. This isn’t quite five yards. But when you open it up, so these are your
selvedge edges and this is the 45 inch width that we’re talking about. So normally what
you’ll do, and in the pattern it will say vertical or horizontal seams. And that depends
on how wide and how long your quilt is. Each individual quilt is going to measure a little
bit differently. But if you have your 45 wide and you put those pieces together, we normally
are going to fold it in half like this. So you’re going to want to stitch along the
edge of the selvedge edge, make sure you have at least a quarter of an inch or a half of
an inch, whatever you feel comfortable with. It’s an inside seam so you may want to press
it to the side or press it flat open. That’s completely a quilters preference. And then
all you’re going to do is cut that fold. And you can cut it with scissors. Often we
will have someone hold the end and just slide your scissor through. It’s super easy. But
if you’re quilting by yourself, you could fold that back in half and lay it down on
your cutting mat and just, cut just the edge of the fold off. Making sure that it’s nice
and straight. Then when you open that up, you’re going to have a piece that is 90
wide by half of the length of your yardage. So if we’ve asked for six yards, this is
going to end up being 90 by three yards which is 108. So you’ll have a piece that is 90
by 108. And that works with all of the measurements. Now if you have a backing or a quilt that
is wider than 90, that’s when you get into needing like three three yard cuts that you
piece in rows. Q: At that point would you recommend going
to a wide backing and show us that. Natalie: Ya, typically at that point, unless
you have like nine yards of fabric lying around that you want to use up, you’re going to
get, at nine yards, your quilt backing will be huge. And I think probably for less effort
and less money you can just buy three yards of a wide back. And we have, there are so
many beautiful wide backs on the market right now. Like you can get solids. You can get
prints. You can get batiks, almost every type of fabric has a wide back option available.
And they’re beautiful. Q: Ok and so what happens too, if maybe I
don’t have something that needs a wide backing but I have a wide backing because I don’t
necessarily want to sew a 45? That works ok too? Natalie: Ya, oh ya. Yep you can always use
that. Q: Ok, awesome. So one of the other things
that people sometimes ask about is directional fabric. Natalie: Oh ya. That’s really fun. So directional
fabric is great. It’s beautiful on a back and it’s really fun. The thing that you
want to remember with directional fabric is you can’t just fold it in half. You would
actually want to cut those pieces ahead of time and then put them together facing the
right direction. So this piece right here, let me get rid of that. This is a beautiful
sewing machine print by Tula Pink, who I love. And so you would want to cut your two pieces
off in separate sections. Q: Because if you fold it in half your machines
are upside down Natalie: Right, right. So half your machines
will be upside down if you do it on the fold. So then what you want to do is, you take your
total amount of yardage and you’re going to cut that in half and then put them together
right sides facing, but making sure, so you can see that this, this is the top of your
little sewing machine set here. So you’re going to open it up like this. And you’re
going to line these up this way. So see, this is still right sides facing and you’ll put
them together like that Q: And then you still just sew on the selvedge? Natalie: Being fully aware, ya still sewing
on the selvedge edge and you’ll end up with the same size but with your sewing machines
all going in the same direction. So sometimes if I’m not feeling up to cutting the fabric
ahead of time, I will just go ahead and fold it in half and have one half going up and
one half going down and it doesn’t bother me one bit. I just, I like to think it’s
quirky and it makes the quilt kind of reversible. You can use either side. It’s just no big
deal. Q: So that’s another question too, when
you have a nice big print like these sewing machines, do you feel like you have to line
them up magically or do you just kind of go for it? Natalie: I don’t personally feel like I
have to line them up because I’m not really worried about that. But if you did want to
do that, you would want to find, you would want to offset them. So you’d need a little
bit of extra yardage. I mean I would say at least an extra yard so that you have room
to play with that. And I would probably try to line them up before you cut, maybe while
it’s still in one piece. And find the place where they line up together first. Now the
other thing that you want to remember is that you’re going to have a seam allowance in
there so you need at least a quarter of an inch to a half inch of overlap. And you’re
going to want to pin and just do your best. But it takes a lot of patience, I will say. Q: And it looks super cute. Natalie: It does look super cute either lined
up or not lined up. But what you’d want to do is just find where the repeat repeats
so you can see like these two hearts line up. So then if you pick like an area then
you’re going to want to put that right on top of it like that. And then you can just
pin that and stitch on top of it to make it look like a, well there it is right there.
So see how you’d have like a little bit of hang off down here and a little bit of
hang off over here, that’s the way that you would be able to line those things up.
And so then once you found this sweet spot where everything looks really pretty, that
is where you’re going to want to put your pin in. And honestly if I was doing it I would
probably press the line so that I knew for sure where I wanted to put that seam. Q: And then you could follow that line? Natalie: Ya because then you have like a pressing
line and you know that’s it’s going to line up just how you want it. And I would
probably not go this far in because I wouldn’t want to use that much fabric. But if you can
match it up here then you know that you can pull it apart and it will still match up over
here. So you just have to find like that place that works, about like that. You know so you
may lose, you may lose a little bit of yardage on this piece but then not the other piece.
You pick one side to get as far out to the edge as you can. And then the other side you
kind of just adjust until it looks right. Q: Gotcha. Natalie: Ya but it’s not super important
to do that I don’t think because I think having it, having it line up just like this
is cute. But I also think that having it just, you know, just line up like this is also cute.
And I don’t think anybody is really going to notice if your pattern is a little bit
offset in the middle of the back of your quilt. Q: Especially once it’s quilted. Natalie: Ya it just doesn’t show up that
much. So maybe if you’re making something to enter into, you know, like the most amazing
quilt contest you could ever even imagine but for day to day quilting I probably wouldn’t
stress about too much. Q: Awesome. Ok so thanks. We have some other
questions about the kinds of fabrics you can use for backing. So I see you have some other
fabrics next to you, can we use batiks as backing? Is there a problem with that? Natalie: I do not have any problem with using
a batik as a backing. In fact I’ve used them several times and they do come in beautiful
wide backs as well. The tricky part with batiks for me is making sure that all of my seams
are on the same side because sometimes you can’t tell the right side from the wrong
side on a batik fabric but other than that I treat them just like regular quilters cotton.
They’re beautiful. They don’t really need to be prewashed. They’re just the same,
ready to go. Q: And then you’ve got some smaller prints
too. Natalie: Ya tonal prints are good. And they’re
great because you don’t have to worry too much about upside down or right side up. You
just piece them together. Q: Our next question comes from Carol in Missouri
and she’s asking about piecing backing with a little extra. She says, “I have a couple
of blocks I didn’t use on the front of my quilt and I’d like to use them on the back.
How do I piece the back so it will look beautiful and don’t look like a mistake?” Natalie: Oh ok, so this, I think, is really
where pieced backings get so fun because you can put a block, you can put a row, a piece
from a, maybe a border type fabric, you can do stripes, you can do so many things. Like
it gets really exciting, the possibilities are endless. There’s just a few little things
to remember when you put blocks or labels or different types of pieces on your quilt
back, you want to make sure that you don’t have anything that is trying to frame the
quilt because of how quilts are loaded. And that, typically that depends on how you’re
going to have it quilted. So I do a lot of sending my quilts to the quilter. And the
quilters typically will load the quilt at the top and the middle. So it’s top center
which means that you can’t guarantee that it will be a certain amount down or side to
side even because it’s not always exact. So when you’re doing something like that
you either want to put it like straight down the middle vertically or straight across the
middle horizontally or off to one side so that when you get the quilt back and it’s
trimmed, if it’s a little to one way or the other from what you had imagined, it’s
no big deal because you planned it like that. So let me show you a cute example. I have
a great quilt that has some blocks pieced into it and this is super fun. You will love
it. So this quilt backing is quite large and she had some extra tulip blocks. And they
went right down the middle. And what I love about this, so these blocks are pieced straight
down the middle. And then right up here at the top, let me pull this other side up so
you can see and the bottom. The blocks don’t go all the way out to the edge. So she leaves
plenty of space for the top of the quilt and the bottom of the quilt by adding this little
piece up here. And really it’s as free, it’s actually even more free really than
making your quilt, your front, because you can do whatever you want. You can add big
pieces here or small pieces there. You know, you can add sashings, whatever you want to
do as long as you make sure that the part that you want on your quilt is centered enough
but not centered on purpose. Q: Does that make sense? If you have loaded
top center but you need it to be low enough that it’s not going to cut off part of your
block Natalie: Right, right. Q: Or trim it in a funky way that’s going
to make you not happy, that will be the part that makes sense. Natalie: So one of the rules, probably this
is what I would go by because we often hear quilters say you need at least eight inches
all the way around for your backing. I would make sure that I didn’t have a pattern eight
inches from the top or eight inches from the bottom or the sides. I would just let that
fabric kind of go off and imagine that it will be cut off. Q: That’s a good tip Natalie: Does that make sense? Q: Imaginary border Natalie: Right, even though it’s not technically
loaded that way so if you have the same amount of fabric here as you have at the bottom,
the top side is going to have more of it, and the bottom side, it may be cut off completely.
It really depends because as you’re rolling those pieces of fabric the backing and the
front roll at slightly different rates. And the quilting, depending on how dense it is,
will shrink the quilt top and the backing. And it kind of just moves around a little
bit. It’s like a, I mean it’s art so it’s not going to be perfect and you can’t expect
exactly the same results every time you do it. So you just want to make sure that you
leave enough room for those types of expected changes, that you won’t be disappointed
when you get it back and, you know, see that the backing shifted one way or the other. Q: So offset on purpose so that you’re happy
that it’s offset? Natalie: Yes, exactly. And they’re so beautiful,
so beautiful when they’re done. I love it. Q: It’s like a reversible quilt, right? Natalie: Totally, yep with a back as interesting
as the front. I love it. So I have another one to show you that has a strip from a panel.
This is a quilt that I believe was made with a panel. So you can see all the beautiful
panel squares on the front that are fussy cut and gorgeous. And then on the back she
had extra fabric and put a stripe of it straight across the middle. So you can see that when
she did this she knew she needed enough at the top and enough at the bottom. And this
stripe is not centered straight in the middle. It’s closer to the top which is very cool.
And I actually don’t know, you know, how much of it was cut off when it was quilted.
And it goes all the way out to the edge so it doesn’t look at all like there’s any
kind of mistake or movement. It just looks beautiful. And it combines these two great
prints. So she didn’t have to have, you know, six or eight yards of one print. She
was able to combine two different prints from her stash or her collection and it just looks
gorgeous. Q: And it totally looks intentional. Natalie: Totally intentional. It’s just
beautiful. And it makes it just another fun thing. Almost like a little quilt secret like,
you don’t know what’s on the back. It’s just as cute as the front. So I love that. Q: So that’s another good tip, you can use
a border stripe? Natalie: Yes Q: Or just piece two different fabrics together.
There’s nothing wrong with that at all. It doesn’t have to be the same fabric. Natalie: No, I’ve done a ton of different
fabrics. In fact I prefer to do that because I like the backs to be funky. You know, just
interesting. To me it’s a little bit more interesting. Q: Can you do that with something that’s
not full yardage? Natalie: Yes. Yes, one of my favorite quilts
that I made a long time ago, when I didn’t necessarily, this is one of my personal quilts
I’m going to show you. I didn’t necessarily have access to a ton of yardage but I had
a lot of samples, like I had a fat quarter bundle that I was working with. And then I
had some other yardage pieces. And so I actually just put together a whole bunch of squares
of fabric and strips of pieces that I had in my stash until the back was big enough.
And it is so colorful and so fun and just, like really full of different, interesting
squares. So you know, the front is just an easy charm square quilt and I wanted the back
to be just as interesting so I literally pieced them together until it was big enough to cover
the quilt. Q: That’s awesome. Natalie: And I didn’t have a pattern, I
didn’t, you know, you have to make sure at some point that like your strips are the
same width but that’s it. And that’s kind of something that you can even trim as you
go. Like ok, we’re working with a 12 inch strip here and then we’re going to add an
18 inch strip and we’re going to add a five inch strip and just until it’s long enough
and wide enough. Honestly there’s no rules. Do whatever you want. It’s super fun and
interesting and cute. So one of my favorite things about backings is that there really
are no rules. You can be as creative as you want and do lots of different things that
are just variable from every quilt that you make. So we are super excited to see what
you guys make and I hope that you share your projects with us. Q: That’s right. So we talked about today
vertical and horizontal seams. So you can do one big piece if you have fabric. You can
use batiks. You can use great big prints. You can line them up or not. There’s no
rules. Natalie: That’s right, that’s right Q: You can go all the way to 108 wide backing
or you can start piecing with all kinds of things and the best advice we have is offset
on purpose so that it looks intentional and that it is intentional. Natalie: Right. And remember if you’re quilting
it yourself you can 1000% line it up however you want to but if you’re sending it off
to a quilter it will go top center. So think about where that’s going to land. It’s
probably going to be two to three inches from the top. You know, if this is the center of
your quilt back, your quilt top is probably going to land somewhere down around here and
the line up those two midpoints and everything else will get trimmed off. Q: And then you’ll have this beautiful quilt
and you can do anything. There’s no rules. Have fun. Natalie: Totally. Yes, lots of fun. Enjoy
it. It can be as much fun as piecing the top. Q: Ya and show us what you make. Tell us in
the comments what you like to do when you’re piecing and ask us questions because we want
to have more questions from great quilters like you for next time. Natalie: Yep. 100%. We love to have your questions.
Thanks so much for joining me today. See you next time.
