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.



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!



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?!



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.



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.



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.



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.



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 ;)