The Quilting of Starbright Part 1

Today's post is about the quilting of Starbright,

it's thread choices and design decisions. The actual quilting will be a future post, as this one is so long!  So, let's get started.

The first quilting decision is choosing a thread color.  This quilt has a lot of colors in it, and I didn't want 6 color changes cause I don't want to work harder than I have to.  I'd rather quilt!   
My color choices were purple, dark blue, lite green, gold, and orange.  I like to take a bunch of thread off the spool and put it on the quilt to see how it might look.  Here's the tests:

Purple

Dark Blue

Lite Green

Gold o

Purple and dark blue disappear on the background, and lite green disappears on the green and turquoise.  The gold works okay, but I found orange to work better because it's brighter and the color shows up on all of the fabric colors.  

Orange

Now that the thread color is decided, it's time for design!

Since the turquoise fabric ended bluntly instead of a point, I wanted to quilt it such that there was a point, to further define the star.  And for fun, I added 4 more points in the background fabric, so now my star has 12 arms.

 

I've come to discover that I don't have to stay within the confines of the patch when quilting, as is the case with this star.  Using a circle now brings all the arms together, and creates movement.  Adding the additional zig-zag makes the star spin.  The pebbles are okay, as they add interest and texture, but maybe something else would have worked better.  But I certainly would not put in more lines--there's enough of that already.

Now for the center.  I treated it separately, as if it were a star within a star.  Here's what I drew up originally

The very center is okay, but what was bothering me was the additional pebbles.  Now there were just too many of them.

So, back to drawing.  Here's a slight variation of the center.

It's okay, but by extending some lines to make four more points, I get this:

That's looking more impressive!  Now I play with fills:

Hmmm, the pebbles are a bit much.  How about a tiny stipple?

Better, but....
  
At the frame, it's decision time.  I have all the lines of that inner star stitched out, but as I look at it and it's relation to the surrounding quilting, I decide not to do any fill.  And here's why:  the stitching of the star had already compressed the area, and I would have to stitch a pretty dense fill to make it pop.  And those areas would be more heavily stitched than the rest of the quilt.  I am a firm believer in consistency of quilting.

Now, I could have filled in areas of the star, but the design was just not lending itself to that.  So, I'm letting the star stand on it's own.

And last but not least, the smaller pink/orange stars.  

The orange area is at the front, but I didn't want it to dominate the quilt.  So here, I went with gentle curving lines that give motion instead of a fill that competed for attention.  And the straight lines in the pink give the eye a place to rest.

I hope you have enjoyed the walk through of the quilting design for this quilt.  In Part 2, I show thread paths to eliminate starts and stops, and how I stitched the star.

Happy Quilting!

 

Starbright is Done!

Hooray!  Finally, the unveiling of Starbright!
Based on one block from April's Book of the Month,
40 Bright and Bold Paper Pieced Blocks , by Carol Doak. (affiliate link)

I have to admit that the evolution of this quilt was due to  Carol Doak's Mastering Foundation Paper-Piecing, and Kimmy Brunner's Machine Quilting with Templates.

Carol's class inspired me to do another paper pieced quilt, and Kimmy's class inspired the quilting!

Here are some closeups of the quilting:

The above picture shows the edge, which is stippling.  The reason I decided on that was because the background fabric was so dark and so busy, it's hard to see the quilting.  So, why spend a lot of time on it?

This picture shows the quilt center, with four quilted star points coming into it. 

And this one shows the star detail. I had the most fun with the stars!  The cut of the green fabric lends a spinning quality to this star, so I played off of that with the circle and zig-zags.  These were all done with a circle and a straight ruler.  The other blue point is filled in with pebbles but as I look at it now, maybe I should have swapped the pebbles with the straight lines?  But then again, so many lines in that star would have hurt my eyes!

And this is the back. 

 

Happy Quilting!

May Day Basket Finished!

For those of you new to my blog, each month I'm challenging myself to make something from one of the numerous books I own.  This month I'm celebrating May Day, and I give you my May Day Basket!

I recently purchased EQ Stitch, a digitizing add-on for EQ7, and digitized the flowers from an applique block. Added those flowers to a basket block in Nancy Mahoney's Basket Bonanza, then a few borders, and viola!  A basket of flowers wall hanging to celebrate spring in May!

This, of course, is before all the pretty quilting!

This quilt measures 18 1/2"x 19", and has two layers of batting.  One is poly, the other (I think) a poly/cotton blend,  using up some batting scraps by zigzag-ing the edges together.  Wall hangings are a perfect use for those scraps!  Even though I like how the two layers allowed the flowers to puff up, not sure that I'll use that combo again.  Some areas the fabric and batting got pushed around, creating a few tucks and unwanted poofy areas.  Or maybe the hopping foot was too close but that's a whole other issue!

Here's some close ups of the quilting:

And this one, showing the pretty flowers:

Happy Quilting!