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!

Monday Meanderings

I had a lovely weekend - did some sewing, had a good time going to a movie and out to lunch, and generally just enjoying some down time!  Then I had a good productive day today as well.  I have most of the borders done on my blue and white quilt - since the border is dark blue and the quilting will hardly show I decided that I will just quilt a simple swirl on it.  I think I might actually finish the quilting tomorrow...then I need to find the binding for it!  I know I had a plan, but I am not sure what it was right now.

I also pieced the sky for this shop sample I am working on - I cut the pieces yesterday while watching television.  I forgot to get the fabric for the most important part of the scene - the lighthouse!  I am going to go ahead and finish piecing the background since the lighthouse is part of the applique that goes on top. I can also get the pieces traced onto the fusible, so I can keep making progress on this one.

Looking forward to another good day tomorrow - we do have some errands to do, but I am excited to keep working on my projects, so that will motivate me to get it done quickly!

Back to Quilting

I wanted to share some pictures of the Nursery Rhyme quilt after quilting.  I was really happy with how it came out and when I showed it to Sharan at the shop today, she liked it as well.  This was a fun project to work on and I am glad that I have it finished now.

Old King Cole.  The block looks skewed because of the way I took the picture - they are actually all nice and square!

 Ding dong dell, Pussie's in the well!

Mother Goose?

This one I am not sure about - looks like Mother Goose sweeping the moon?

One of my favorites, the old woman who lived in a shoe!

And the back - I did a nice job of balancing the tension on the sashing - I used dark blue on the top and white on the back.  It came out great!

Today I got back to quilting my Blue and White Star quilt.  Instead of continuing on with the bubbles and swirls that I did in the center I decided to switch it up and am doing swirl hooks!  I was surprised to get almost 1/4 of the way around the outside of the stars today, so should be able to get all of the white done by the weekend!  I know what I want to do in the following border, but then I'll have to figure out what to quilt in the last one.  I will be glad to get this one finished because I have several more tops lined up that I want to get quilted!

I am looking forward to getting more sewing in tomorrow - the fabric came in for a set of curtains I need to finish, and I want to do more quilting on this star quilt.  Plus I'd like to do another block or two for that Block of the Month I'm working on.  April has been so crazy that I haven't gotten too far on that project, but if I push a bit I should be able to get it done over the weekend, I think.  Anyway, I'm going to give it a good try.  Then I need to decide what project I am going to work on in May.  The fair is coming up in a couple months and I want to enter some nice projects!