I love quilt backs…

…. and I cannot lie. You other quilters can’t deny…..

Ok, really bad singing session is thankfully over, but I was dying to share my latest quilt back with you. This quilt was released on the weekend as a guest post on Sharon’s blog, Simple Life. You may recognise it as my March Simply Retro Challenge quilt, finished!! Backed and quilted and bound (now) and washed, all ready to snuggle up with.

Here is the back at the basting stage

The beautiful peach coloured chevron print is from Lizzie House’s “1001peeps” range, of which I have access to a secret stash. I just loved the way it complemented the bright oranges in the Full Moon Lagoon range. Of course, I didn’t have quite enough width as it is only normal quilting width, so I split my piece up the middle and inserted some leftover pieces from the top – large squares and a row of pinwheels up the top.

 

This finished shot of it also gives you an idea of my custom quilting job. My very first attempts at feathers, and also a chrysanthemum type design that I found a fabulous tutorial via Pinterest from The Inbox Jaunt. She actually has lots of different quilting motif tutorials that are worth checking out. The flowers went a lot smoother than the feathers, as the domestic machine quilt wrangling did make things a little rough at times.

You can see better in this picture that I echoed around each motif in a circle, filling the inner gaps with lines, outside triangles with a simple meander/stipple and the inner diamonds with lots and lots of pebbles.

 

 

I used a Rasant thread in a super soft peachy colour, it totally vanished on the orange, blended into the pink and made a simple contrast on the white. I was really happy with this thread for free motion quilting, it broke very rarely, (Guttermann broke regularly when pebbling) and didn’t lint up the machine much either. Being 50wt I fitted a LOT on the bobbin, this whole quilt only took 6 bobbins to quilt, and I completed the whole quilt on 1 1000m spool with some to spare.

 

 

For the binding I chose another Lizzie House “1001peeps” print, the orange stars. It worked really well with the massively diverse colours in this quilt – orange, pink, white and purple!

 

 

The finished quilt is a glorious riot of colour. The quilting washed up lovely and soft with beautiful texture and the bamboo batting gives it a lightweight drapey warmth. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll never go back!

And of course, it’s fully puppy approved….

 

 

When these photos were originally taken the binding was only half completed due to a string of killer migraines. Since then it has been fully stitched and it looks fabulous. My very first full quilt of hand stitching the binding and it went a lot better than I was expecting. I think I’ll be hand binding more often!

Here are some of my other pieced backs….

 

So, what about you? Do you make pieced backs, or keep them simple?

 

 

 

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