Quote Originally Posted by Sylvia H View Post
I do my own quilting on a home machine. The larger the quilt, the more "extra" I have for both the batting and the backing. For a bed quilt, I will make my batting 3 inches longer/wider than the top, on each side (or a total of 6 inches extra horizontally and vertically). The backing will be an additional 2" longer/wider than the batting on each side. (or a total of 4 extra inches horizontally and vertically.) I did have one quilt (one of my first) where I ended up not having enough backing on one side. It was a king size quilt, and I think poor basting was the culprit. Because I had a very busy backing design, I was able to attach an additional strip to the backing to make up the difference.

For smaller items, I still try to keep the increases to about 2 inches, although I sometimes will make the batting and backing the same size. The type of quilting does make a difference. The heavier the quilting, the more the batting and backing will be "taken up". So if you know you are going to do heavy quilting, you want to make allowances for that.

I have to fight my desire to save material in this area. It is better to end up with too much material after quilting than not enough.
Thanks for the help. I am trying to understand all this. So, in other words, the quilting takes "up" the material a little and if you don't leave it longer on all sides it gets smaller with the machine quilting? Oh dear me, I need help.