Hand quilting is filmed from above, always. The camera sits over the shoulder and watches the hand with the needle in it: the rocking, the loading of the stitches, the rhythm everyone wants to learn. The hand that decides how the back of the quilt will look is underneath, out of shot, and most tutorials never mention it.
Kim, of Exshaw Quilts, does mention it. Her big stitch tutorial is aimed at someone who has never hand quilted, it comes with a supply list, and it deals with the half of the work that usually gets left to improvisation.
Watch the hand under the quilt rather than the one you can see. Where those fingers sit, and how much tension she keeps in the fabric between them, is what decides whether the back comes out as calm as the front. It is worth getting from the start rather than adjusting later, because puckering on the back does not announce itself while you work. The top looks well, the rhythm feels good, and you find out when you turn the quilt over at the end, by which point the only remedy is ripping it out.
Big stitch is one way in. If you want our own written walkthrough of hand quilting, from needle and thread choice onwards, it is here: how to hand quilt.
Credit where it belongs: the tutorial is by Kim, on the Exshaw Quilts YouTube channel.
