I like backsides. When I’m doing street photography, I often focus on images of people from the rear. Maybe that’s because I think the result is more likely to convey a universal truth than if the face is there; identifying the individual as, well, an individual.
With quilts, too, I like the backsides to be interesting compositions. The expected traditional way to back a quilt is to use yardage of one fabric. I admit I do that sometimes. But most often when I do that, I find the result to be boring to me.
I often piece the backs of my quilts, especially the large ones. The blue “wonky star” above is on the back of GBI Blues. I included lots of my favorite blue fabrics that hadn’t found a home on the front. In 70 and Still Wearing Jeans, I used pieces of fabrics collected for Jim’s quilt where the images were too large to include in the stars on the front.
In Seven Black Birds, I incorporated the discarded half-square triangles created for the sashing in the back. That quilt hangs on a ladder in the den and more often than not, the “back” side is what is turned out to the viewer. That’s the quilt here on the hayrack and bicycle.
Sometimes I have fabric that I don’t want to cut up into little pieces for use on the front of the quilt, so I use a whole piece of it as the back of something. That way I can leave the piece as a whole unit. The toile piece in the photo above is on the back of Blue Tumbling Blocks, a small wall hanging described here. I recently wrote about Linen Baskets in which I did the same thing with a fabulous Jane Sassaman print.
My most recent piecing effort was inspired by a piece of fabric I’ve had in my stash for many years. I just didn’t want to cut it up. So a pattern involving books (paper foundation pieced) seemed perfect for the front of a quilt with the “reading” fabric on the back. So, it’s true. I designed a quilt with the back planned first. Here is a photo of the backing fabric folded on top of the pieced top. More details and photos will follow when the quilting is done.
