Christmas Deer Quilt

I love pieced backings!

I love this book!  I've use it a lot over the past few years for pieced words and pieced a lot of backings with names. The alphabet pages are now taped to hold them in the book. 

Here's how I do it...it's really pretty easy.  I like to starch my fabric before I cut it for names.  You get less distortion with your 1.5 inch strips.  Best Press is my best friend.

I use it as I piece and press each letter.

When I get done It almost stands alone!

I always put the name about 15 inches down from the top sometimes in the center sometimes to the side.  Here I will fold the top of the quilt in 4th's and press it to make some creases.

Then I slice the backing 15 inches from the top.  The name block is 7.5 tall so I need to make another slice in the backing 7.5 inches further down.

The name block is 24.5 inches wide...

...so I will cut a 23.5 inch strip from the middle of the center 7.5 inch slice. Instead of cutting 23.5 inches from one end, I cut it from the middle so I can keep my pressing landmarks in the right place... 

Now, you can see the name block has been inserted in the middle of this strip.

And the pressing landmarks are going to line up perfectly to sew this back together.

It all lines back up and it's a breeze to put back together.

How fun is that?  It took me about 45 minutes.