FO Friday: I've finished the quilting!

On Monday evening I managed to finish quilting the Christmas wallhanging I'm making. I was hoping to have made more progress last week and to get it totally finished on Monday but a Saturday trip to the seaside and teaching a full day workshop on Sunday left me with very little time so I didn't get any work done on it. Anyway, on Monday I finished the quilting and cut the strips for the binding so it should be finished soon.

I've done some of the quilting with a walking foot, mostly taking inspiration from the shapes and patterns in the print.

This block has zig zags - inspired by one of the stripes

This design was inspired by the squares in the pink stripe

Wavy frame design

The wavy frame design was suggested by my very experienced quilting friend Sarah as I didn't feel confident enough to do circles!

This one had stars, a design I used on a quilted advent calendar and loved!

I also decided to be brave and do some free motion quilting on an actual quilt rather than just having a try on some scraps

First attempts at free motion quilting

...and then I was really brave and did free motion quilting on the border. It was printed with spirals so I didn't really have a choice ;-)

They are far from perfect but I learnt quite a lot while doing them. Sorry to my Monday night friends who had to put up with my squeaky sewing machine foot.

The backing for this quilt is navy. It was a bargain remnant piece. The thread I've used for quilting is a Madeira variegated one and I was happy for it to show up on the navy as it makes it easier to see how my quilting actually looks. I've also seen a number of quilts in blogland recently with the quilting pattern showing on the back in a totally diferrent colour thread to the fabric and have really liked them. So here it is, the back of the quilt

I'm really pleased with how nice the back looks. Hopefully next week I'll be able to show you the finished wallhanging.