Tunisian Afghans Backing

I have been asked several times to explain how to do the back of a Tunisian Afghan. I don't currently have time to put together a video, but I will put one together as soon as I get my many WIP's finished.... including the partial Harry Potter afghan shown in the lower section of this post. I didn't get pictures of the backs of the first 2 afghans but it looked the same as the Harry Potter Afghan.

Click on photos to view a larger size for more details

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This afghan was made for a 2 year old girl, as you can see our dear Rocky (RIP June 2010) just had to be in the picture, you can see the scaling of the afghan a little bit. I believe this one measured roughly 45"X60".

This shows the finished piece.

This picture shows the border stitch used on this afghan.

This next picture shows the back of my afghan after I hand quilted it on.

This one shows a close up of the blanket stitch I used to attach the edges of the flannel with the outside of the afghan. Also a close up of the quilting. The blanket stitch goes through the flannel and then also goes through the back stitches of the afghan, then I just crochet through the blanket stitch and the afghan to put the border on.

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This is the first Backed Tunisian Afghan. This is a double bed/queen size afghan. This was made for a 9year old boy (well now he is 11) and he absolutely LOVED it.

This is the completed afghan. I actually just made the graph for the center piece only, after I had it 75% completed I realized that it was too narrow so instead on ripping it out, I added the side panels. This was challenging but I was very happy with the over all look of the piece. There were no seams on the underside after I connected the two side pieces.

This shows the front with the back on the other side.

Here is the backing, This is orange with a blue stripe around the edges in flannel.

Here is a close up of the type of quilting I did on this afghan, with the side and border. I did the same blanket stitch that I did with the Princess Aurora Afghan above.

Close up of the border and blanket stitch.

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Here is the Harry Potter Afghan, it is about 60% completed. Yes I have dogs so yes something this large is bound to have doggie hair all over it. I wash all afghans prior to backing, I then wash them again after I complete the afghan and get pictures of it.

Here is the front on the piece and you can see the over all size of this afghan, our foster gsd Lance is enjoying himself on this afghan.... I can't seem to put an afghan down and not have a dog in the picture. Since this is to show the back I figured it wouldn't matter if there was a dog in the picture.

Here is the back, and when I get finished it will look the same, I won't touch any of the tails and will just cover it with flannel. If you want to sew in the ends you may do so. Tunisian afghans weren't meant to be completely reversal-able like crochet afghans. So you will see where you changed colors just like in a knit afghan. If you knit you will change colors in the same manner.

This shows you that I tied on the end on the bottom left then just used the one strand to go up and when I was finished with that color or section I just cut it off and tied the end.

I do carry my yarn and this shows a section of carried yarn. If I were to weave in the ends I would not carry yarn on the back.

This picture shows the color change around the edges, each section of color has it's own ball of yarn. You need to twist the yarn around each other to prevent holes. I do think I show how to do color changes in my Tunisian video on YouTube.

For an example, if I didn't twist the yarn around each other at a color change, I would have a HUGE hole right where the gray is straight for about 10 rows below.

Some more close ups.

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I never carry the yarn more than 10 stitches even when I am backing the afghan as the floats are too large on the back and I would hate to snag it when I putting the backing on.

Again these types of afghans are not meant to be reversible, like a crocheted picture afghan can be. There will be traces of the color change on the back, if you don't your afghan will have LOTS of holes for little fingers to get into and can get stuck so be careful about holes.

There are several ways of doing a backing such as using yarn and just tieing the afghan (you see these on a lot of old quilts, that don't have quilting done on them (guilting is the type of sewing).

I do hope this helps even a little bit.