I said I would come back and talk about the backs of my quilts, so I might as well do that! Bear in mind that I haven't made a quilt in several years now so things may have changed, some, and/or I may have forgotten a thing or two. But I think the basic idea of it's still valid.
This first one is a more simple example of how I used to do the backs of my quilts. Even if you're doing the same fabric all over, you're going to have to put at least one seam in the back for most quilts, unless you buy special extra-wide quilt backing fabric. (That does exist but it's a bit pricey and the
selection is relatively limited.) I just figure, given that, why not run a few seams and use up some scraps?
This was a quilt that
KarenD and I did together. I know that fish fabric was hers, and the batik was a fabric we picked out online. I'm not sure any more which one of us contributed the other pieces. Basically, though, the idea is just that you just keep going until you get something big enough.Make a row that you know is wide enough, and then make another row, til it's big enough with several inches each way to spare. (Cutting it too close is a bad idea, here - if something comes out short you're really screwed.)

Here's a more elaborate example (this is the back of the one that's in my icon). I had lots of little pieces left over - it's the "teeth" part of the zipper, see - and I just put them together in big strings, like so:

(I actually went and dug out
the link from my old quilt blog because I knew I talked about this there. It's got more detail about the dimensions and stuff, and why I did it the way I did, but unless you're actually going to make a quilt you don't really need to know all that. That blog is unfortunately just a mass of dead links, mostly, so I really need to make some effort to pull the "good parts" out and catalog them somehow!)
Anyway, if you clicked over there, this is just a bigger version of that same picture. I worked the strips of small pieces between the bigger rows and this is what I ended up with for the back:

(A lot of it is things I didn't end up using on the front!)
Added: it occurs to me that people might want to see the front of the thing in a larger size than icon size, so here's that (with Rob's head peeking out at the top). Note that the binding is not whipped down here, but other than that, it's done.

I've actually found a few more pictures of the back of things so I might have another entry about this eventually.
