Wild Mustang - Part 6

I finally got the back finished for the Wild Mustang wall hanging. I had to redo the whole thing because the first time I made it, it was major wonky due to some issues with using the left over brown squares from the horse portion of the reverse applique part.  This is what it looked like initially and the problem was caused by several factors. 

The edge of the brown square triangle pieces that are sewn to the borders are on the bias. The right angle triangles were not a perfect 45 degree angle, they were out by a degree or two but that was enough to add to the problem.  Then when I added my borders I just cut my strips from the width of the fabric and started to sew them, this was the way I was taught in my beginner quilting class many years ago.  Well it turns out that isn't really the way you should do them and my friend Sue from Long Island found out that the proper way is to measure the side of your quilt and then cut the border to size, find the midpoint of both the quilt and the border and pin it and pin the ends.  Then you pin the mid section between the end and the middle on both sides and continue to do so until you have enough pins to keep everything together and stable.  Sue found out able this technique when she took some long arm classes on how to fix problems with quilts which included things like wavy borders.

I took everything apart, I added iron on stabilizer to the brown square triangle sections and then made sure that they were proper right angle triangles and each one was the same dimension. All the sashing and border pieces were then measured to spec, pinned and sewn which took a lot longer to complete than just cutting strips of fabric and sewing it down. Sue also made a suggestion of adding a different colour of Stonehenge fabric into the center of the X sashing and as well as in the corners of all the borders.

  So this is the end result and the wonky factor is gone and it looks great.  So all the extra effort was worth it.  Now it's time to make the quilt sandwich and then I can start the actual quilting.