Back finished

I spent yesterday and today working on the back for the African fabrics quilt.  My goal was to use fabrics that didn't make it into the front of the quilt (although there a couple repeated from the front), to make an archive of the whole collection. I did my best to arrange the blocks in a way that worked, but I wasn't aiming here for a cohesive composition. With blocks this large, the only way to get that would entail being very deliberate about choice of fabric, and that's not what I was trying to accomplish here. My choice of fabric was limited, and I wanted to include at least one triangle of everything I had left. 

I'm glad I was able to use a couple of fabrics in particular: 1) the "Africa" fabric that is the center block in the 2nd row (click on the image above to enlarge and you'll see the map of Africa in the middle); a different cut of the same fabric used in the bottom right corner, and 2) the peacock blue fabric with embroidery on it, center block in 3rd row. Here's a detail shot so you can see the embroidery:

Next I'll start working on the quilting. I did some sample quilting on potholder-size blocks, and this is what I've chosen, straight-line quilting that echoes the seam lines--horizontal, vertical, and diagonal.

By the way, in this block, only 2 of the 5 fabrics happen to be African, upper left and bottom right triangles. The other corners are fabrics by Kaffe Fasset, and the center block is from a collection of fabric given to me by a former student about 10 years ago.