Seeing Stars Quilt

I made this quilt for a friend's daughter. I actually designed a king size quilt for my friend first, and then created this one to coordinate with the king size. But I want to share this one first. :)

I wanted to make a star quilt, something fun and whimsical for a sweet 6-year old girl to enjoy now and as she grows. I certainly added touches that she will love now (such as the awesome Art Gallery Menagerie print from the Indian Summer line), but tried to stay away from anything too cutesy (which isn't her style, anyway!).

I used the Sparkle Punch quilt by Oh Fransson! as a jumping off point, but added in 3 large stars (centers are 9" square, stars about just until 27" from point to point!) and some itty bitty stars (centers are 1" square, and less than 3" from point to point!).

Warning: Picture colors are off a bit...I was short on time and my lighting options were either full sun or full shade!

I played around with arrangement a bit, but ultimately decided to not disrupt the flow of the majority of the stars. Because of that, I ended up with a decent amount of background around the larger stars. I filled it in a bit with the tiny stars, and I'm really happy with the layout! I like the extra background space, as I think it calms the design down a bit.

Here's that great Menagerie print! I initially bought this for my stash, but I had to use it for this quilt because it suits the recipient so well. (And now my LQS has the print in BOTH colorways, so I restocked my stash!)

If you follow me on instagram (I'm TheGirlWhoQuilts), you probably know that I've been keeping a quilty secret for a few weeks now...I took the plunge and bought a long arm! I'm now the proud owner for a Handi Quilter Avante 18, and I'm so happy with it! It was quite a whirlwind for a bit though, as we set up the machine and I practiced a bit before diving into these customer quilts. This was only my second official quilt on the long arm, and I'm pretty happy with it! I went with a simple swirl design to keep my stress level low. ;)

For the back of the quilt I used mostly the solid from the front, plus a strip of this fun peacock print:

Quilt stats:

Name: Seeing Stars

Size: 75" x 90"

Background: Kona peacock

Prints/fabric lines include: Dear Stella (peacock feathers), Constellations Lizzy House, Architextures, Cuzco by Kate Spain, Pearl Bracelets, Backyard Baby, Indian Summer, Children at Play, Bella by Lotta Jansdotter, Luxe in Bloom

Binding: Constellations by Lizzy House, Supernova pint in purple

Dresden Sparkles

As you can tell from the pictures below, I made this quilt a few months ago. I intended to give it to my brother's girlfriend, Caroline, for Christmas, but I ran out of time. I had to set it aside and I finished it up in February, I think.

Caroline loves purple, so I started by pulling out the purple colorway of 1,001 Peeps by Lizzy House. I used a pale purple for the background so that the prints and the piecing would pop. After the EZ Dresden challenge last year I had the idea to create these "sparkle" blocks. There were plenty of similar quilts in the contest, and I was really drawn to the simplicity of alternating a print with a background solid.

I quilted the background in a small meander and left the sparkles unquilted so that they will "pop" a bit. In hindsight, I wish that I had stitched in the ditch around each print. It's not too visible from the front, but it is from the back.

I really love all of the Lizzy House's work, and this line is no exception. Caroline is a sweet, fun girl, and I thought she's appreciate the whimsical tone of these prints.

On the back I used two different purple solids and the left over prints. The binding is an eggplant color, as that's Caroline's favorite shade of purple.

Caroline loves her quilt, and I was happy to cross this WIP off my list just before I headed off to QuiltCon! Last week I finished up two custom quilts and delivered them over the weekend, so I'll have a few new things to share as soon as I edit the pictures!

The Wall Street Freaking Journal!!!

I know it's been really quiet around here lately, but trust me when I say that my quilting studio is anything but quiet right now! I'm getting ready to head back to Peoria, IL for a quick visit with my in laws and to run the inaugural Run River City Marathon! I'm really excited to get back to the midwest, even if it's only for a few days. While I'm there, I am going to deliver two custom quilts, one of which I'm still working on. I have faith that I'll get it done, but with race training and quilting that doesn't leave much time to blog!

I wanted to pop on here to share the exciting news that there is a great article in the Wall Street Journal regarding modern quilting! To read the article, search the following text in your search engine of choice:

Modern Quilters Stress Simplicity

You should come up with the WSJ link! (If you attempt to link through the WSJ website, it's a paid subscriber only article - booo!)

There's also a short slide show of quilts from Quilt Con, you can find those here. I'm super excited to share that my quilt is on slide #5! A sweet friend alerted me to the photo this morning, and I've contacted the WSJ so that they can (hopefully) include a photo credit! Either way, my quilt is on the freaking WSJ website!

OK, I'm off to shower after my morning run - I've been chatting with my hubby, my mom, and anyone else who will listen ever since I found out that my quilt was online! I have a few older quilts to share, I'll try to post about at least one of them before my trip next weekend!