I finally quilted my Handmade With Love Quilt from the Said With Love sew along earlier this year (click here to read all the details of the sew along) using Cotton + Steel Garland and Tinsel fabrics.
Then I did my favourite ‘snow tracks’ quilting… organic wavy lines all the way down the quilt.
Now to be fair, I had finished the quilt top during the sew along (phew! I kept up!) but of course I wanted to do something a little different with mine.
You have probably figured out by now that I love making double sided quilts …. and this one was no different!
So for the back I used the @dairyofaquilter tutorial for the Holiday Patchwork Forest quilt and I used @sterlingquiltco instagram tutorial on how to make the trees from a layer cake. Though I did use the same trunk fabric throughout the entire quilt as I had lots of that available.
I just *happened* to have a Winterberry layer cake and a few odd layer squares from Winter’s Lane (oh, and have you heard the news that Kate & Birdie are re-releasing Winter’s Lane!??!?! Colour me excited!)
Now as our Xmas falls in the middle of our summer (think 40 degree celcius and eating salads and cold seafood!) we don’t need a lot of quilts to snuggle under… but this one might very well become an ‘under the tree quilt’ so we can put our presents on it. And then it will get another airing during our winter when we celebrate ‘Xmas in July’. Us southern hemisphere dwellers get to celebrate Xmas twice!
But we definitely did NOT need two Christmas quilts!
Or maybe it will just stay in our lounge and become a very favourite snuggling quilt!
A few people have asked how I do the ‘backs’ of my double sided quilts…. so here are a few tips! (and a cute pic of @thefabrichusband wrangling my large double sided quilt!)
How to create your own double sided quilt
- Make two quilt ‘tops’ that you love
- I like to use fabrics from the same line or designer or similar colours OR have a similar theme like Xmas for the two sides
- Your ‘back’ quilt needs to be wider than your front quilt to allow for quilting (so if getting it long arm quilted you will need AT LEAST 4″ each side wider). I usually have at least 2 inches either side
- I don’t like cutting through actual quilt blocks on the back, so I usually put a large border around my back quilt so there is lots of wiggle room when basting
- Spend the time ensuring that your back quilt lines up straight in relation to your front quilt. I baste on a table so there are nice edges I can line things up on.
- Remember that finished is better than perfect 🙂
And why would you want to create a double sided quilt I hear you ask??
There are always more quilt patterns I want to make than I really need finished quilts for, so this is a great way to get all those quilt tops out of my system without ending up with a gazillion quilts!
And I think plain backings are a little dull and a lost opportunity 🙂
And I *might* have a small fabric buying problem (ok, ok, I am a fabric addict!) so finding delicious fabrics with which to make a second quilt isn’t that difficult!
Tell me, have you ever done a double sided quilt?
Part of my fourth quarter #2017FAL #2017FALSWL
Great tips and congratulations on another wonderful (double sided) finish! 🙂
Thanks Yvonne!
I love it, I really want to try this once I gets bit better st quilting
Oh Pat, have a go anyway! Life is too short to wait until you are good at everything ???? Enjoy the process, the making, the creating, the learning. xx
What a great way to get your “want to makes” done more efficiently! I think this is a great idea. Thank you for the tips about that.
Thanks Janice, hehe, yes it is a great way to make lots of quilt tops but only half the number of quilts!!
You’re tempting me to make a double sided quilt. Great use of the Christmas Cotton and Steel! Thank you for participating on behalf of the 2017 FAL crew!
Hehe Ella, have a go! 🙂 Thanks for hosting the FAL 🙂
Love the fabric choices on this, what a nice finish!
I am creating a simple stripes baby shower quilt (with the parents opposing baseball teams on each side). I am pretty new to quilting (only one completed) and planning to quilt this at home, stitch-in-the-ditch along the stripes. Please can you explain to me why one side (the “back”) needs to be larger? I have seen lots of sites that say this but still don’t really understand why…!? Thank you!!
Hi Francesca! The ‘back’ needs to be a bit larger than the front because as you quilt it, the sewing contracts the fabrics a bit and the backing, if only the exact same size, will end up being LESS than the size of your front and that is not good….
And I would actually suggest not doing stitch in the ditch…. as a beginner quilter (and believe me, as a more advanced quilter), stitch in the ditch is very hard to do well. Stitch a 1/4″ or 1/2″ off the seam lines either side is much easier and much more forgiving! Then it doesn’t matter if the ‘back’ isn’t exactly aligned the same as the front either. I would love to see your finished project so please email me or tag me on Instagram @said_with_love !
Thank you for the tips. I am making my first double sided memory quilt with one side being a t-shirt quilt and the other side being a pieced quilt top. How do you decide which is the front or the back so you can make it larger?
Hi Mary! With one side of your quilt being a t-shirt quilt, I would make that the top/front as you will probably need to take a bit more care with the quilting on that side than the standard pieced quilt top on the back.
Then I would add some extra borders around the pieced quilt back to make sure it is wider on all sides than the t-shirt front.
In general ‘it depends’ is the answer 😀 Sometimes the decision is based on which is bigger to start with, or which I want to concentrate the quilting on, or which is easiest to make larger (with borders etc) to be the back.
I hope that helped?
I’m currently working on a DBL sided quilt for my daughter-in-law with my granddaughters baby clothes cut out in hearts on one side and my grandson’s cut out in pac-man images. This is my first one so I’m looking for tips. Thank you so much for your blog!! Wish me luck!
Awwww how gorgeous that sounds! I hope the blog post helped you! Basically it is a take it nice and slow when you are basting your tops together and you should be fine! Good luck!
I finished my first quilt in October, and it is double sided. It’s made out of all my favorite baby wraps (from my baby wearing days, which I couldn’t bear to part with 😭), and so I wanted to use as much of the material as possible. The front is just simple 7” squares pieced together, handed quilted with diamonds through the squares and tied in the centers of the diamonds. The back is a rainbow of stripes of the same materials, with chunky embroidery thread Xs along each seam (which match the stripes). I do love how it turned out! I’m pondering doing a second double-sided quilt as a remembrance from a trip I was able to take this summer. I’m thinking of doing a landscape on one side, but still thinking about the back. Possibly using my family tartan somehow? I want the quilting to be a poem which I wrote on my trip. (Geesh – it’s go big or go home, apparently! 😅)
Congratulations on catching the bug for double sided quilts!!