Don't Panic!

Presenting Don't Panic, the quilt formerly known as Astro Quilt.  You may recall this one is for my astronomer husband.  Since I have no imagination at all when it comes to naming my quilts, he was charged with naming it himself before he could take possession of it.  He came up with a few obscure astronomical terms but decided it was a fun quilt and deserved a whimsical name.  Split Infinitive was a contender (a rather geeky reference to Star Trek, ask me if you want to know more), but last night after I finished binding the quilt "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" came up in conversation and the catch phrase "Don't panic" won out.  It seems appropriate, since I had a few early setbacks working on this one, and hubby can always go hide under it when grant proposals or whatever other work stresses pile up.

I had planned to finish this one quickly by tying it, but decided to hand quilt it instead.  The whole  background is quilted with patterns like you see above.  I'm quite pleased with the way it tuned out, even though it took a few months longer than anticipated to finish.

I even like the back.  Piecing the back wasn't planned.  When I decided to add borders the quilt grew bigger than the backing fabric I had bought, so I added scraps from the front. The quilting pattern really pops on the back.  The green is brighter in person than I managed in the photos, so it's really quite a striking, cheerful backing.

So now my UFO list looks like this:

1. Astro quilt - all quilted, just needs binding!
2. Mom's table runner and placemats - add borders and quilt
3. Hearts quilt - still quilting, still quilting...
4. Swap blocks quilt - add borders and prairie points then set aside till my freemotion skills improve
5. Leaf quilt - add prairie points and quilt (machine or hand? haven't decided yet)
6. Whimsy - lots of piecing still
7. Hawaiian quilt pillow - started this in 1995 and found it again just today!

Tiny bit of handquilting

I've gotten a start on handquilting the two quilts that came home basted last week. The first is my daughter's heart quilt. We still haven't settled on a name for it. Christine, any flashes of inspiration? :)


The chain pattern in the purple border is "Avalon" from Quiltmaker magazine's "Quilting Motifs, Volume I" book. Making a template from this was a real treat for me. For the first time ever I didn't have to resize anything to make it fit where I wanted. I also don't have to stretch or contract the motif at any point to make the pattern repeats fit. This one fit perfectly straight out of the book! I must say it made it easier to choose the motif, because the other two I also liked needed fussing with. (Disregard the large grid. That's just the machine basting.)

I've quilted 2 more hearts and the adjoining border areas since I took this picture. That's a total of 3 out of the 48 blocks in the quilt, so I still have a way to go.

There has been more progress on the astro quilt quilting, as it is quilted much farther apart in a much less detailed design. It is difficult to see the quilting in the picture, due to a combination of poor lighting and black thread on black background. I didn't want contrasting thread to add to the busy look of the background. You can see it a bit better on the back in the picture below if you click on it to enlarge it. The poor lighting really washed out the green in the picture though. Again, disregard the basted grid.




My daughter said it would be OK to work on this instead of hers since she already had a quilt and dad didn't. Frankly, I think she took pity on me because I kept having to re-mark quilting lines that were fading before they disappeared altogether. I marked this one all over before basting so I could see the whole effect, and make sure I balanced the number and size of the circles and where they overlapped. With my daughter's "permission" I am now trying to get all these quilted before I have to squint and mark a third time. I can go back and quilt the stars later.

I bought "White and Natural" batting for the astro quilt because the label on the batting claimed it could be quilted as far apart as 10 inches. I'm a little closer than that, but too far apart for the Hobbs 20/80 batting I've been using in most quilts. The White and Natural is thin and lets me make smaller more even stitches, something I hadn't considered in batting before. I wish I'd put it in my daughter's quilt as well, because with its flannel backing it has extra thickness and I'm getting larger less consistent stitches. What batting do you prefer and why?

Astro quilt progress

The top is done! I set it aside for a while as I pondered borders. I had originally planned to not have borders at all, but the quilt didn't look finished so I played around a bit. I thought I had settled on a thin blue border, but when I started sewing I decided it still didn't look done. I thought about a black outer border, to sort of go with the background fabric, but that didn't look right. I finally remembered that I was thinking a little outside the box with this quilt, and decided the background could spill out of the box too.

So, after being inspired and discovering exactly what I wanted, I was completely deflated to find the fabric I bought 8 months ago was no longer available (who'd have thought?). I could have sworn I saw some the previous week though. Anyway, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I finally found some online. It arrived and I became obsessed and neglected the housework again but I finished the quilt top. The lighting has washed the colours out a bit, but you get the general idea.

I wavered back and forth about how to quilt this. I had meant to tie it for a quick finish, but then the quilt said "swirls". Of course it changed its mind and claimed the quilting would get lost in all that busy background. I suggested quilting the stars and tying everywhere else and it was happy with that while it waited for borders. Once its borders were attached, the quilt started talking about circles...

I spent the afternoon Friday marking the quilt for quilting with a lot of not-quite-concentric circles in the background overlapping with other sets of circles. I'm not describing it very well, but it looks interesting. The test will now be to see if the quilting shows up at all on the background, and if it looks as interesting quilted.

There will be a delay, however. I hadn't planned borders. Adding borders made the quilt larger. A larger quilt means the batting and backing I had prepared are too small. I really need to start waiting to finish a top before I prepare those. It isn't the first time I've gotten caught. Long story short, I need to piece together scraps to extend my backing, and I need to go purchase more batting.

Oh, and the larger size is just a bit too big to baste in sections on my kitchen table, and I still pin to the carpet when I try to baste on the floor. Off to a machine quilter it goes to get basted, then I'll finally get to start. This is taking much longer than my initial plan, but the quilt is going to be so much more interesting than how it started out in my head that I don't really mind. Besides, spring is bound to get here soon so my hubby won't be needing the quilt right away, right?

Astro Quilt

Here's a peek at what I've been working on for my husband. When he pointed out last spring that both kids have "fun" quilts to snuggle under when they watch TV but he didn't, I went out and bought a bit of this fabric as a joke. I didn't actually think that after working as an astronomer all day he'd want more of it at home. Apparently he has chosen to work at what he loves, because his eyes lit up when he saw the fabric.

So, I went back to the quilt shop and came home with this:


I had a star quilt pattern in mind, but realized before I cut into the fabric that the tiny pieces wouldn't do the space print justice. I pulled out graph paper instead to come up with something new. I decided I wanted large swaths of the space fabric. It took a while for me to remember that there is no rule that says a quilt has to have blocks all the same size lined up in rows, but once I clued in I just sprinkled stars across the graph paper. I spent a few hours figuring out the best way to link them all together with the background fabric. I suppose applique would have been the simpler way to scatter stars across a fabric, but I'm not skilled at that, so piecing it was!

These plans then sat in a box with the fabrics for 8 months while I finished my son's quilt, started my daughter's, made a few table runners....

I've been wondering if the fabric version would live up to the picture in my mind, and last week I finally pulled it all out. I hesitated before cutting in, because I just might have calculated wrong, but finally cut some fabric and started piecing.

It turned out I had figured a few things wrong, but I'll post about lessons learned next time. For now, here are some of the star blocks.



Once I started placing them on my design wall (a big piece of batting thumb tacked to the wall, but "design wall" sounds much more grand!) I wasn't a hundred percent happy with the layout I had on paper. I'm still playing around with it. I'm not sure I'll ever be completely happy with it, but my husband is a very agreeable man who tells me he likes it, please finish it :) I'll post pictures when the top is done in a few days. I'll want your ideas about what to do for borders.

Meanwhile, happy quilting!