The back of the Anna quilt

I wanted to start off by saying I try to reply by email to every comment. If you don't hear back from me it is likely because you are a no reply blogger!

Angie asked me to share pictures of the back of the Anna quilt that my Mom made and that I quilted for her. I don't have the quilt but I do have some pictures of the back so I thought I would share them today. This is the center panel from the front. Inside the hexagon frames are spider webs and I used the webs as lines for quilting. The other blocks were a large floral print and I wanted to quilt a circle of feathers inside the frame of hexagons - note that I didn't quilt over the hexagons so the feather is underneath. I did however quilt around each hexagon with my free motion foot. I used Superior Monopoly on top and The Bottom Line in the bobbin.

In this picture you can see that I marked a light blue curved line inside the frames of hexagons. These lines would act as the spines for the feathers.

At this point this is how it looked on the back.

I quilted the feathers, echo quilted around them and then stippled in the background.

This is how it looks from the back.

There is a border of elongated hexagons (also called coffins). As part of my initial process of stabilizing the quilt they were stitched in the ditch. You can see the stitching on the sides of the quilt in this picture.

I've stitched just inside the edge of the long edge of middle row of coffins. The purpose of this stitching was to provide me with a stop point when I quilted the filler design.

The filler design I chose was a figure 8. I chose this design because it is something I can easily doodle on paper and if I can doodle it on paper odds are that I can also quilt it!

The last decision was how to fill in the upper and lower rows of elongated hexagons. I stitched just inside the  top and bottom edges of the rows of elongated hexagons and then filled them will a free form feather. I also echo stitched around the feathers. Here you can see the top row completed.

And this is the entire border quilted.

And as requested here it is from the back.

I really enjoyed taking Cindy Needham's Craftsy class Design It, Quilt It: Free Form Techniques and one of the techniques she discusses is divide and conquer. Essentially you divide your larger spaces into smaller spaces and then you quilt them. That is exactly what I did with this quilt and others. The entire quilt is stitched in the ditch to stabilize it and then I go back and divide the larger spaces into small spaces and quilt them. Sometimes spaces may have to be divided a few times. I find I get good, consistent results using this method! I hadn't decided how to quilt the elongated hexagons so I started working the border. Here you can see the dragonfly I quilted and the stippling behind it. I later when back and quilted the elongated hexagons.

I hope you enjoyed this little show! Time for me to do some chores so until I post again, happy sewing!
Karen H