Well, it's not exactly a book or product review, but since I so recently completed Starr Fabrics' Summer Solstice, I felt like I should start re-blogging with commentary on this fabulous, intricate paper-pieced beauty. I started this in earnest in April. I had done the cutting back in October, a couple of weeks before my baby was born, but that was as far as got until my spring quilt retreat. It's done in a block of the month format, which in general irritates me because I like to chain, but for these particular blocks, it is a necessary and merciful way of doing this quilt. For one thing, while many blocks are similar (there are four two-star blocks, six big 18" star blocks, four four-small-star blocks, and two long two-star sashing blocks), no two are exactly the same and chaining could get disastrous. These blocks are also an accomplishment, and doing them one at a time keeps a person feeling capable.
The only error I found was in block #10, and there was plenty of scrap fabric to fix it. The pieces went together beautiful and sharply, as paper-piecing should and the fabric, all hand-dyed by Starr Fabrics, was gorgeous. It has a nice hand and prior to discovering Deb Karasik's seam roller, I finger-pressed everything and that worked great.
Now on to the pictures! While I have significantly more hours in piecing, I feel that my quilting is what makes this quilt really mine. This quilt is not a difficult quilt, per se, it is a long quilt. It's kind of like getting a PhD in paper-piecing--you put in the work and you can do it and you'll be really good at paper-piecing by the time you finish.
Here is the first row in these two photos. I have a sort of stream-of-consciousness way of quilting that is hard for me to explain. This is my biggest difficulty when teaching machine quilting. I never know what exactly I'm going to put on any given quilt, often even as I go I'm not sure. But occasionally I come up with one thing and wing every other element. For this particular quilt, I was on a very tight deadline (I had three days to quilt & bind it), so I kind of had to gun it and not look back. It took me about 30 hours over the course of those three days. The two things I decided on before I started quilting (and I'm talking 15 minutes before) were my border, which I did in large fluffy feathers in a rainbow of colors and unicorn horns. The five outer big stars have different unicorn horns radiating out from them, you can kind of see the neon orange one in the top picture above. The other one is the completed first row. I chose to add a lot of loosey-goosey (that's the technical term) freeform feathers between stars. I did this with matching blue So Fine thread. Then I put Box O' Hair filler in around everything in matching blue thread.
This is the halfway point The thread color of the border feathers is more dramatic in person, but not as pronounced as I'd hoped. I used washable wool batting for this quilt and the wool quilts so beautifully. I also put solid minkee on the back which looks awesome!
Here you can see a little bit of the Box O' Hair which is kind of like McTavishing, but I'm just not very good at McTavishing, so it sort of morphed into its own thing. You can also kind of see in this one, in each star, I picked one color (here, the orange) to do some sort of dense, intricate quilting. Each big and medium star was different. This gives it a really cool 3D effect. The small stars just got the same swirly pattern in each one in a matching thread.
Almost finished!
More unicorn horns (in lime green) and some of the freeform filler feathers.
The last row! You can see the colors of the border feathers a little bit better. You can also see the scale. Since the border was very large and blended with the background combined with the 18" size of the big stars, I felt big and bold feathers were appropriate.
On the table, pre-trim. Note that my feathers all kind of flow down the quilt. This is because I didn't mark anything, but also because of the summer sky aura, I wanted a flow-y, cloudy feel.
Me in my booth that I busted my butt to finish this quilt so I could hang it! Can you tell that paper-piecing is one of my things? This was at the Missoula quilt guild's show.
Another shot of some of the quilting and the complete kit in the foreground.
Freeform feathers in the center. I tried to have them pass through the stars.
Next month I'll be reviewing Atkinson Designs new book, Graphic Mixx. I've started, but I want to get through more before I release my thoughts! I do have the complete kit at Little Timber Quilts and I will get it put up at www.ltquilts.com! Don't forget to like Little Timber Quilts & Candy on Facebook! Thanks for reading! I'll see you next month on the 15th (I know I'm a day late and a dollar short this month)! Happy quilting!
