Thursday, June 26, 2014

Starlight Starbright Finish

I’ve been absent from blog land more often than not for most of June as I was busy enjoying real life.  We enjoyed my parent’s visit for a week, the start of summer and puttering in the garden.

There was a bit of sewing/quilting happening.  I made a few small purses, which I forgot to photograph before giving away.  I also quilted Starlight Starbright. I tried to have a creative photo shoot before it left for its new home, but as you can see, not only was the wind having fun playing with the quilt, I am still working on mastering artful draping of quilts.
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The two pictures below at least show off the quilting detail.  In the border I just echoed the prairie points using my walking foot.  I used the walking foot for the outline quilting inside and outside all the stars as well.  In an earlier post I pondered quilting the alphabet in the stars, but in the end I decided that the colors provided enough variety and I needed something common in all the stars to calm things down, so I went with a simple free-motion swirl in each star.

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Finally here we have the classic quilt with legs photo op (my thanks to my hubby)!

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My quilting goals for the next few weeks are to:

1. Layer, baste and quilt my red and green, non-string version of Sparkling strings so I can add a finished photo to the pattern cover and release that pattern.  Otherwise the pattern is all ready to go.  My tester did a fabulous job and I’ll be posting a photo of her quilt top soon too.

 2. Layer, baste and quilt Seeing StarsI think I have a quilting plan for it finally so I need to get to it before I change my mind again.

 3. Hand quilt a teeny tiny bit on the kaleidoscope quilt (and maybe come up with a name for it?) though it is a bit warm these days to have that massive thing draped over my lap…

 4. Finish writing patterns for Baby Steps and Starlight Starbright.  I’ll be needing pattern testers again. Let me know if you’re interested.  Both quilts were super easy and quick to make.

 5. Prepare a beginning EQ7 class to teach at my LQS at the end of July.  I’m excited about this one, but as I plan I’m discovering new features and I really need to start narrowing down the class focus, not expanding it!

 OK, maybe these will take more than a few weeks, especially if I plan to enjoy sitting in the garden that we just spent so much tome making pretty!

Monday, June 2, 2014

Starlight Star Bright

On my design wall today:  my Starlight Star Bright baby quilt.  I loved playing with these bright fabrics.  I think I could have chosen a slightly lighter color for the blue stars, but overall I’m happy with how this turned out.

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Figuring out what size prairie point to insert after the inner border took a bit of trial and error.  The original size I planned was way too large and floppy.  The next size was too small.  What you see here was something in between and think adds just enough dimension and color.

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This needs to be quilted this week.  The finished top has been waiting on the design wall for over a week as I waited for the quilt to speak up and tell me what to quilt on it. In the end I think it will be simple outline quilting inside and outside the stars, and a simple cable in the outer border.  The prairie points will remain unquilted so they stay dimensional.  Perhaps some alphabet in the stars, if I don’t run out of time and patience!

 

 

 

I’m linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.