Yesterday I posted photos showing the front of Jennifer’s Block of the Month pumpkin quilt she made during a class at one of my local quilt shop gems, The Smocking Shop. Today I thought you’d like to see the back.

Jennifer chose a plain muslin back so the quilting is very prominent. You can really see the feathers well. I decided to use the vines of the pumpkin patch as my spine for the feathers. In the spots that were too funky to fit a flowing feather, I used curls and my new favorite filler design based on a hooked on feather with meandering. Fast, easy, effective!

You can see my new favorite filler around this chicken. It is based on a single hooked on feather with meandering. It goes fast and looks fancy without being hard. This next one is another new favorite filler for me. It looks like palm fronds and it goes fast too

This photo shows the alternating echoed leaves in the sashings. It is hard to see this from the front as the batik hides the stitching. But it looks good from the back! This sashing treatment is super simple too. It can be found in Darlene Epp’s pocket guides. I love her books and turn to them for inspiration over and over! I used a parallel lines stencil with barely blue pounce powder to divide up the space evenly so that I’d know when I needed to change direction. I used a copper colored Glide poly thread that almost looks like metallic.

Here you can see the diamond echoing frame I put in four of the blocks. I used a ribbon candy in every other section to add texture and to encourage the non-quilted parts to lift up for definition. I used my favorite water soluble marker for all the line work. I find that I need to draw the line work first before I quilt frames and cross-hatching. Otherwise my little brain gets confused.

The quilt was done 100% freehand and I had fun playing with some techniques I’m working on that I’ll be able to share with you later this spring. I really hope you try the sashing design with the alternating echoed leaves.