Yesturday, I spent the day loading and quilting good fortune. There was a discussion on one of the Facebook groups about squaring up the backing before loading the quilt. I personally expect my customers to have care and make the backing as straightish as possible. Most people do their best when sewing the seams together as they are usually following the salvage. I have had a couple that were more challenging, but in general the backings are straightish.
I thought I would share a photo of a backing fabric and how I load it to the machine, even if the backing is not straight (for the record though, this one is straight). On my longarm I load the bottom of the backing on first, so step one is to lay the backing across my bars. I will centre the backing, with the backing just floating there. I will line up any reference points that I have. If it is a horizontal seam I will line it up with my bars. If the seams are vertical I can line it up to the measuring tape.
Either way you do it, you will immediately see if the bottom edge is straight or not. I do not cut a customer backing to make it straight. I straighten the backing on the longarm and clamp the backing to the leaders, knowing that regardless of the edge, the backing is centred and will line up perfectly with the quilt top (or nearly perfect within 1/2").
Once this is done I will carefully roll the backing onto the bottom roller making sure to check my reference points. When I get close to the top, I will again instantly see if the top is straight or not. And again, regardless I will not trim this, I will keep the tension taught, knowing I have the backing straight and clamp the edge to the top roller. It works for me every time.
I took a picture of the backing of this quilt to show something else too. It is not yet fully loaded. The picture shows the bottom has been clamped and rolled up some with the top portion floating over the top bar. This is how I roll them. The leaders on the top bar, creates the friction needed to keep the backing taught while I roll.
As I said already, I do not trim or square up a backing. Well, this backing had a lot of excess fabric on each side. The backing was almost 125" wide, and the quilt top itself was only 90" (36" difference and at least 30" more than I needed). So, what I did was fold the fabric edges inward (as seen in the picture above), and just rolled the backing up as usual. If rolled up carefully and taught, it will not create any problems and will not have sage.
The thing you need to remember is that the only parts you are concerned with while quilting is the space between the two bars (the quilting area), not anywhere else. There are times, when there is a lot of piecing on the backing, that you will get loose spots on the bar, but by the time that section reaches the quilting area it will be fine. Loose spots on the take up bar does not mean saggy backing. The loose spots are usually there because the seams take up more room than the one single layer of fabric.
You have to remember, that your backing should not be tight while you are quilting, there should be a bit of give. Sometimes the waviness in a heavily quilted quilt is not created by the quilting itself, but by over stretching the backing. If it is too tight, once the tension is released the backing goes back down to size and takes the top and batting with it, creating the waves.
Above I have the top view of the quilt that I am ready to start quilting. I float my tops to keep everything lined up. If there is any fullness I will catch it as I advance with my measuring tape and my added markers (seen above on bar with yellow tape. The red tape is holding my tape measure in place.
I hope this helps someone. There is a lot to learn, but if we all share our best practices, we will all learn together faster.
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