The Giants - Part 4

I love the color red, and I enjoyed making this red quilt. This quilt lives on the back of my charcoal gray sofa in the living room.

I think I bought this fabric for the backing of the quilt before I had even started cutting pieces for the quilt itself. Yes, it's big. Yes, it's bold. Yes, it's RED. That was the whole point.

This quilt, Font Factory, makes no sense if you just see it hanging somewhere. I made it as a sample for when I teach my free pieced letters class. The letters are grouped on how I think they are best constructed.
 

So I thought it would be fun to use fabrics with two different kinds of typewriters, one on the backing and the other on the hanging sleeve. This is another fabric that I matched the pattern when I joined two pieces together to make the backing big enough.



This is "Life is 'Tweet," a sample quilt I made for the class I teach on making free pieced asterisk flowers, butterflies, birds and hearts. It seems I am totally incapable of making a traditional "row quilt. These asterisks, hearts, birds and butterflies just seemed to want to be airborne.

I bought this fabric for the backing of another quilt, but that quilt never happened, so I used it for Life is Tweet. Again, I matched the fabric pattern when I made the backing big enough for the quilt. My quilter, Chris asks that backings be six inches bigger all the way around.

This is the "Blue Deco" quilt I made earlier this year as a table covering.
.

I don't always use the same fabric for the backing. Sometimes, as in this quilt, I will use a large print down the middle and add a contrasting piece on either side. Still though, this is a pretty big flower print. I wanted something blue-ish and spring flower-y.

This is the Triangle Dance flimsy, another "stash-busting" quilt. I wanted to use fabrics from my stash for the quilt,

and I also used fabrics from the stash for the backing. All of these are pretty good-sized prints, and they "echo" the black fabrics on the quilt itself, since those are all fabrics with a black background also.

The "Fall House Top" quilt I made as a table covering (aka tablecloth) for Thanksgiving has three fabrics in the back.

They are all food-related, so I thought they were perfect. One is Martini and other cocktail glasses, the middle one is all about coffee and the last is a novelty fabric that has eating utensils.

And, um, yeah. All three of those came from the stash too.

This is it for the backings of my quilts. I have other quilts, but you get the point. I think if a quilt has two sides, you should make the "B" side interesting too, and that it should relate somehow to what's on the front. Strangely enough, though, I do not consider it a compliment when somebody (who obviously knows nothing about quilts) says, "It's reversible."

Um, no.

I like to make the backings a surprise. I like to make them interesting. I strive to make them relate to what's on the front. I don't ever want anybody to turn one of my quilts over, look at that back and think, "where did THAT come from?"

Why not? Well, think of it this way. If everything you do has "you" written all over it (even if it doesn't have your formal signature), why would you want anybody to think you didn't care enough to do a good job when you got to the back?

At my job, (and I will have been there 27 years this week), I have a very nice reputation. I heard it from another coworker, who put it this way.

"If you want it done right, give it to Lynne."


Now THAT'S a reputation worth having.