Machine Quilting: Lonestar

Darlene is on a mission to finish up several quilt tops hanging around her house and this was one of them:

 Isn't this quilt amazing?! In person the colors are much brighter. For instance, the red isn't red - it's more of a rosy mauve type color. The blues are much brighter, etc. etc. Alas, I love it!

 Darlene wanted to keep it more traditional with the feathered wreaths and line dancing in the star itself, which is where I offered to try the Dream Puff batting to keep it authentic. Plus, I knew it would make the quilting pop.

 I switched up the threads between the borders, star and background. The background and rosy border both got an off white thread where the star and outer border got a light blue thread. That way the thread didn't take away from the quilt. The last thing you would want on a quilt like this is thread that's in your face loud.

 I love Love LOVE this quilt. And now I want to make one of these too. Just so I can quilt it. And hang it somewhere. It reminds me of my Great Gramma. But this isn't about her or me, so back to the quilt...

 Sorry for the picture overload, but can you blame me?

 I knew how to quilt the star, I knew how to do the feathers. The last area I had was the rosy border. I was done with everything else and I still didn't know what to do.

The challenge was it's small. And it's surrounded by feathers. Usually in small spaces like that a flowy design works well, but another curvy design would have looked like a hot mess. I looked through my Angela Walters book for inspiration. I found one I liked, but I wasn't sure how it would look since I hadn't done it before. So I turned to my Pinterest page... and that moment it didn't want to work and was only showing me two pictures, neither of which helped.

Taking that as a subtle hint that the design I kinda liked was the one to go with, I played on the magna doodle for a minute to get comfy with the design (it let's me draw out the design first on something other than the quilt. A dry erase board could work too, but no mess with the magna doodle) and then I went back to the machine and it was done. And it worked! I love it!

 You can see the design here. It's basically triangles, but it gives the border a look of argyle and it broke up all of the feathers perfectly. I will warn you, it looks weird up close, but you have to look at that design as a whole.

 So there you have it. A very traditional type quilt. I have to say this was quite refreshing in the mix of all of the contemporary crazy shaped quilts I've been working on. I love quilts like this, but I'm a traditionalist at heart.

 Oh, and this post wouldn't be complete without some shots of the back of the quilt!

I heard from Darlene that she loves the quilt and it's also cat approved. Her cat Nermal found it almost instantly when she brought it home and has found himself a new spot.

Thanks, Darlene! Great job!