Super Scrappy Backing

I recently finished another Partial Dreams Quilt! This makes number 5 for this one. Partial Dreams is a FREE pattern that I offer to my subscribers. It’s a great way to practice partial seams and has lots of possibilities for such a simple quilt. You can get this FREE pattern HERE. It has instructions for either fat quarters or a jelly roll for the foreground.

I made the front using some beautiful benartex fabrics:
Foreground = “A Wildflower Heart” by Katie Daisy
Background = from “On Dragonfly Wings” by Ann Lauer

We’ll look at the other parts of this quilt in the next post, but for today, I want to focus on the scrappy backing. I didn’t have enough of any one fabric that matched. I could have ordered some or went to the store, but I decided I wanted to work on the backing right away. This is one of those times when I ended up doing a LOT more work to avoid something simple like going out and getting fabric. Most of my super scrappy backings are a result of this nonsensical reasoning. I do really like scrappy backings though. So, it’s ok.

The front of this quilt has lots of colors. I was tempted to try to pull them all into the backing, but it would pretty hard to match all of those colors. I decided to just use shades of purple in the backing and not worry so much about them being the sames shades of purple from the front of the quilt.

I dug through my stash of Benartex fabrics and pulled LOTS of purples. I also grabbed a few white prints to break up the purple a little bit. I made a video on this scrappy backing and some other parts of the proccess for this quilt for my YouTube. You can check out that playlist HERE.

Other than sticking with purples, this scrappy backing had no rhyme or reason. I decided to do an improve style backing. I was just sewing pieces together until I filled up all the space. This was inspired by one of my Grandmother’s old quilt tops that i finsihed for my uncle a while back. You can read about that one HERE.

I used some charms from “On Dragonfly Wings”, “Dazzle Dots”, and “Nature Unfiltered”. I didn’t want to have to match up those seams from the line of charms with the rest of the quilt. So, I decided to just sew strips of that lavendar “Marbleized” on to the top and the bottom. I also had some extra background squares from the front. I cut some squares in a contrasting purple to sew them to. I had a few batiks that benartex sent me samples of back in 2024. They were a lovely purple, so I couldn’t resist using them.

This was definitely an improv style backing. I was just sewing stuff together without a plan. BUT, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t being careful. I still had to square off the edges before sewing things together and press each seam before sewing anything else on. I still needed this backing to lay nice and flat for me so that it wouldn’t cause problems when I quilted it.

Other than the charms, batiks, and the few squares leftover from the background of this quilt, all of the pieces were used in previous projects. It’s fun to look at your scrappy projects and try to remember the project each piece was from. Here’s a list of where some of those leftovers were from:
– The big dragonfly print in the top left corner: Fabric line is “On Dragonfly Wings” by Ann Lauer. It was leftover from the backing of my original Nine Carat Quilt. This is my best selling Cut Loose Press pattern. I’ll be having a quilt along for it from September 22, 2026 – October 26, 2026. I’d love to have you join us! You can sign up HERE.
– The small dark purple strip in the top row is from “Newer Worlds” by Rob Appel. It was leftover from the cover for one of my other Cut Loose Press patterns, Crosshairs Quilt.
– The long white strip is from “Midnight Rhapsody”. It was the background fabric that I used in Partial Dreams Number 3. The large purple dot print is also from Partial Dreams Number 3; it was one of the prints I used in the backing. It’s “Dazzle Dots” by Christa Watson.
– The smaller dragonfly prints plus a few other prints were from “Jacobean Garden” by Kanvas Studio. These were from the sample quilt I made for my “Dragonfly in the Sky” pattern. This quilt was hanging at Quilt Market back in 2025! You can get the FREE pattern HERE.