Monday 23 December 2013

Winter Stars – A Finished Quilt!

 With a couple of days to spare, I have a finished quilt ready to wrap and put under the Christmas tree! While it’s most definitely not the season for quilts here in Oz, I think any excuse is a good excuse to make a quilt! Plus, as soon as I saw this quilt in the Christmas edition of Fat Quarterly – I knew I had to make it. Christmas was a most convenient excuse.

Winter Stars 1

The pattern is called Winter Stars – it’s a paper pieced pattern designed by Lynne from Lily’s Quilts. The original pattern had 9 stars, but I ran out of time. So 4 stars becoming a lap quilt suited my purposes!

Winter Star block

I used Sun Print Bike Path prints (by Alison Glass) and paired them with some of the new Kona solids. It was a rather happy accident. Without realising it when I placed my order, the Kona solids I picked worked beautifully with the Sun Prints. Don’t you love when that happens?!

Quilting on Winter Stars

I was stuck on how to quilt it, then thought a wavy quilting would look nice – kind of picks up on the wavy pattern of the Bike Path prints. Just happened to see a pic on IG from Diane (@ylmommyx4 on IG) about how she used a stitch on her Bernina. Seeing as I just got a Bernina… well it was most timely.

Coloured quilting thread

Then I had a dilemma. I didn’t have enough grey thread to quilt it. The local sewing shop was closed, and there’s no way I’m hitting the highway for the 50 minute drive to the nearest Spotlight at this time of year. Not just for thread. So I used up what I had, debated and drove my usual sounding board (the gracious and most patient Erin of Missy Mac Creations) crazy and then settled on her suggestion to use another colour thread that matched the stars. Hot Pink. Crazy I know. But the backing of the quilt is pink so I went with it.

Pink backing

A scrappy binding finished it all off nicely. I did consider binding completely in a Sun Print Bike Path – but then decided to let the stars speak for themselves. So a grey binding with a few dashes of solid colours in it for added interest.

Winter Stars quilt with scrappy binding

And on the theme of trying new things (wavy quilting, scrappy border…) I also sewed the binding down with the wavy stitch (#4 stitch on the Bernina set to 4.0 width) instead of my usual straight stitch. I like it.

Wavy stitch binding

And with that quilt finished – I am pretty much done with my Christmas sewing! This lap quilt will be going to my Mum – she’s getting a rather handmade Christmas this year (Mum, you better not be reading this or else you’d better practice your surprised face!!). I’m a happy quilter. With a pretty quilt. That I kind of want to keep for myself ;)

Winter Stars 1

14 comments:

  1. It's wonderful Kristy, I am sure your mum will be thrilled with it. The wavy line quilting is just perfect, and the wavy line binding is amazing! You are really pulling out all the stops with that fancy machine of yours :)

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  2. Look at you go! What a fantastic lap quilt and just in the St. Nick of time :) Love the wavy quilting and it's really effective on the binding.

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  3. it looks great and thanks for the shout out. di

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  4. Beautiful finish! The fabric choice and the way you decided to quilt it complement each other perfectly! Nice job! What a great present. :)

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  5. Beautiful finish and I think I really need to the wavy quilting. hugs

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  6. That quilting looks great and I love it on the binding. Hope you can get on with relaxing now! Happy Christmas :-)

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  7. Such a very pretty quilt! I like the color pops in the binding and the wavy line quilting is perfect; I especially like how the stitch worked on the binding!

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  8. Yes I am curious as to which kona grey you used to make it all POP like that? Indeed the wavy quilting and snippets of colour in the binding just adds a clever highlight.

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  9. It turned out gorgeous! I do love the quilting and it is now on my 'to do' list! I just finished up my last quilt for the Holidays last night...its a great feeling to be done!

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  10. It's lovely ~ and love the squiggly lines too!

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  11. This turned out great! I love the fabrics and the serpentine stitching is so fun! I love how it matches the fabrics!

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  12. Quilt looks great! Good idea using the wavy stitch. I'll give it a go! Merry Xmas.

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  13. It's such a lovely quilt. I just love the Bike Path prints.

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