Shining Star

Oh boy how nice to have a large quilt done.  I did put the binding on my I hate it and I'm going to rip it out.  Anyone in the McHenry, IL area want to trade binding services for quilting services?  Send me a private email, would love to trade with you (s dot daurio at yahoo dot com).  A few details of the quilt.  I used wonderful Kaffee Fassett shot cottons, I love the depth and dimension the dark colors have.  I used to battings, one hobbs 80/20 and one hobbs wool, it really shows the quilting wonderful and has a nice weight to it.  Glide thread on top and magna glide bobbins.  I used three different rulers on this one.  One straight lines, one 13" curved cross hatching and Rhonda's double S curve small.  Solid off white on the backing. Here's some detailed pictures.  The full quilt can be seen here.  Oh almost forgot the size, it's 117 x 117 -ya that's one big quilt!!

straight lines in the light area, feathers in the dark

you can see the curve in the dark area that helped to make the area a bit smaller in the middel. The feathers are one sides and going in one direction

Here's how the corners look 

And there it is on my bed, love it. 

How did I come up with the design?  Oh boy purely by accident.   I knew I wanted feathers since this was going to be for me, love feathers.  But when I started to look at designs the plumes were really too large for what I wanted.  I also knew I wanted a design in different directions for the light and dark to give more definition to each area. The pictures show a decent amount of contrast, but in real life it's less.  I couldn't think of anything with feathers in the light area so after a few hours of trying to find something that worked, I tried straight lines.  At first I had them all coming from the corner, and then moved the center group up so there were as many intersecting lines at the corner (didn't even think about the star area or the points in the larger squares).  I started quilting, had 2 blocks done with the straight lines and hated it!!!  I thought, why am I doing straight lines when I really want feathers.  So I started taking the stitches out.  Oh boy have you ever tried to take stitches out of a quilt that has a double batting?  Sesh, I couldn't do it.  I spent almost an hour and didn't even have one block ripped out.  Needless to say, the lines stayed.  I would love to say the thought  was a stroke of wonderful creativity, but it was just the opposite.  A desperate attempt to make progress at any cost.  I did all the light areas first which gave me some time to think about how I was going to add feathers to this quilt without looking completely out of place.  I knew I wanted feathers going in one direction on each side of the square but again was stuck with how big they were going to be.  That's when I added the curves, that helped to cut down the size.  If I only did one side of the feather, I thought it might look more linear and work better with the lines that I really didn't want :)  Turns out in the end, it all worked out ok.  And this is generally how my quilts get quilted.  

What have I done since?  I found 3 different smaller projects in progress and started working on those, trying to get those shelves cleaned up!!  Her'e's the circus panel quilt.  I made 4 of these, thought I would get an early start to 100 Quilts for Kids. Don't forget all the linky parties on the side bar, so much inspiration and creativity out there.