Saturday, May 16, 2015

Blue and White Stars - Bloggers Quilt Festival Spring 2015 Home Machine Quilted Quilts

I always look forward to the Bloggers Quilt Festival!  Such a fun way to be able to participate and see some wonderful quilts - my poor husband will really wonder how many quilting blogs can one woman look at this week!  I am entering this in the Home Machine Quilted category since that is one of my favorite things about this quilt.

This quilt began last year as a Project Quilting challenge in 2013 - the challenge was to make a quit in your favorite color with only white added.  I knew right away that I wanted to make a blue and white quilt, and after making the blocks decided that I would rather make this a nice quilt than do a rush job on the quilting to finish by the challenge deadline.  So it took me a little over two years to actually get it finished...I think the wait was worth it!

Each star has a dark blue center made from one of my favorite stash fabrics!  It is a blue celestial print with gold highlights.  So pretty!  Then I added a deep blue for the star points, light blue for the corner squares and a medium blue for the triangles on the setting squares.  The points all came out great, thanks to the use of the Tri-Recs rulers (one of my favorite ruler sets!).  I added the white border, then the quilt waited for a while.  I needed some yardage for blue borders and it took a while to find the right ones that would frame the quilt just the way I wanted it to look.

It took me while to decide how I wanted to quilt it as well.  For the inspiration behind much of the quilting I used Angela Walter's book "Free Motion Quilting".  I also drew from Leah Day's website for the sharp stippling I used in the light blue areas.  (See the video here!)  I use a Juki 2001QI for piecing and quilting.  No frame, I just use it on my table - works great for larger quilts, it still gets a little tight in the center, but way better than my old 1979 Kenmore was.

When it was finished being quilted I realized that I didn't have binding for this quilt.  I don't know how many times I have done this, so I am pretty good at improvising!  I had actually thought about using this two colored binding, so was really excited to find just enough of the dark fabric for the strips needed (I had 1 inch to spare after cutting!)  I made it a bit narrower than I had before and it came out perfect.  I love that little pop of the lighter blue, it really frames the quilt nicely.


My favorite thing about this quilt though, is the quilting!  I used Aurifil thread for all of the quilting.  White in the background, a blue/green in the medium areas and a dark blue in the dark sections.  The bubble and swirl design was fun to do and looks great in the diamond shaped center squares.

I was a good girl and buried all my thread tails on this one (I generally just snip them off close to the quilt and don't worry about it)  You can barely see the contrasting threads on the back in this picture, but I love the way they bring out the design on the back of the quilt as well!
It's a nice size for a queen bed - I don't generally make my quilts with a pillow tuck because I prefer pillows on top.  Since I have plenty of quilts for myself (with two new ones in progress!) I am listing this one in my Etsy shop.

Be sure to head on over to the Bloggers Quilt Festival and check out all the other awesome entries!

6 comments:

  1. What a great idea for a beautiful star quilt! I love your design, wonderful fabrics and nice quilting :)
    Greetings from Poland
    Kamila

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  2. What a wonderful quilt:))

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  3. Such beautiful quilting!!

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  4. You make a very nice quilt.

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  5. I would have been making a blue and white quilt too! Yours is stunning, and I love the quilting designs you chose for it. So beautiful.

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  6. Your quilt is really striking! The colours are just perfect for this pattern!!!
    Esther
    esthersipatchandquilt at yahoo com
    ipatchandquilt dot wordpress dot com

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