Quilt 42: All the Pretty Horses - DONE!

I'm picking up speed now with my quilting, finding I'm getting through at least one "throw" size quilt a week, maybe just a tad more. Neighbor Anna's grandkids are visiting from Germany - and I'm doing a quilt for each of them. The little boy is a soccer fan, so we've got a sports-themed one designed for him. Her granddaughter is mad for horses and Native Americans - so that's what we designed for her. First, here's the general design we agreed on:

Simple square blocks with a "frame" around them. We had no trouble finding prints that Anna liked.  Here's what we bought:

The Native American print (upper left above) will be the backing. The rest is for the top.

The blocks are simple, so putting them together took very little time, maybe a couple of hours:

I didn't "fussy cut" the blocks, knowing that just cutting randomly would work out fine with the size blocks in this quilt (7" squares). I laid them out carefully, making sure that blocks with similar images weren't too close together.

And here's a closeup of what they look like (click any of the photos on this page to see a larger image):

And here's the center all assembled and ready for the borders

And now the finished quilt!

It's stunning. I'm really pleased with how that top turned out.  The back, however? Not so pleased.  Honestly, I don't know why, but I was thinking that the seam wouldn't really show up - but it does.

I've just randomly joined backs before when using printed fabric. The problem here is that we're looking at a one-way design. It's just not random enough for doing what I did.

You can see what I mean in the photo below. The seam is just about 1/3 from the left. BLAST!

The bottom line: Anna's pleased with it anyway.  And I've learned a painful lesson: pay more attention!  (or avoid one-way designs on backing fabric)