Star Bright Quilts

Last spring, Holly Anne Knight at String and Story hosted a Quilt Along of one of her patterns, the Star Bright Quilt. This pattern is part of her Winter Hexagon Minis bundle.  It is a simple layout - basically 4 9-patch blocks. Each part of the 9 patch is 12x12 - so the finished quilt is 72 x 72 - until one decides they want it bigger. The Quilt Along was accompanied by a quilt plan challenge - so I knew going in that my goal was to make the same pattern twice with the result of completely different quilts. And I succeeded. Both quilts finished just under 90 x 96 by the time I added border blocks.

My One Monthly Goal for February was to finish and gift both quilts. This meant I had a deadline of getting everything quilted and the binding attached by February 16 as I was travelling for the rest of the month. I am happy to report that I met my goal and presented the quilts to two very happy nephews on February 25th.  This is a photo intensive post!  This also adds two finishes from my Projects Half Done!

My first thought was, I can do this from my stash. Ummm NOPE! Too much fun to shop for fabric. My older nephew is an Orlando Magic Fan! So much so that his walls are painted in the magic colors and a giant logo is above his bed. It was a no brainer once I found the Orlando Magic fabric and ordered almost enough to make a quilt back (see above comment about making things bigger).

My younger nephew is a renaissance man in the making - he is into computers, video games, tennis, soccer and plays the steel pan (drum) and the trumpet! When I found the mosaic fabric at a short bolt sale, I confirmed with my sister that he likes blue and green as it kind of reminded me of Minecraft. For some reason I thought his school colors were blue and green, but I was wrong.  I started piecing the quilts in April and into May and completely finished the blue/green quilt. The Orlando Magic quilt languished in the quarters for several months until I got myself back in gear in January.

I had to be creative with the backings as I extended the quilt with a pseudo border that completed the blue squares along the edge.

I used the bonus triangles from the star points to create center strips for each back.

Pressed and ready to pin. I started with the Orlando Magic quilt as I had a better idea of how I wanted to quilt it.

The Magic back. I have a tough enough time sewing a long straight seam, so imagine my frustration when I realized I sewed this strip to the wrong side of the fabric and had to rip and resew a 96 inch seam!

I decided to echo quilt the star points to look like a repeating M.

The background is McTavished and there are basketballs in the blue and black squares. The tricky part was the star centers. 

I knew I wanted to try to replicate the Orlando Magic logo in the centers. So I went back to using the Golden Threads paper so that I could make identical logos. I should have just sketched each one as they all came out a little different.  

After I removed the paper, I echo quilted to add more texture.

The Magic quilt has been washed, the Renaissance Man quilt had not been washed yet - thus appears bigger.

My original plan to bind was to wrap the Orlando Magic fabric from back to front. Unfortunately, while trying to trim away the batting, I sliced the back on my second cut, so I practiced my machine binding as I knew I wasn't going to have time to hand stitch binding on two bed quilts this month. I am happy to report that I did not at any time have to unpick backing fabric from my quilting as I managed to keep the excess fabric out from under the needle.

Moving on to the Renaissance Man quilt.

I chose a variegated thread for the background quilting on this one and as I wound bobbins realized that based on the number of bobbins, I did not have enough thread. So a quick trip to Greensboro later, I still didn't have enough thread as they were sold out of the color I needed. Thankfully Wonderfil shipped promptly and the thread arrived in time for me to finish the quilt. These are heavy and I did not want to ship them.

While I avoided quilting the backing into the quilt along the edges again, I did not avoid hitting pins and sewed through not one by THREE pins.  Something about this fabric had my pins blending in a bit too well. Thankfully I didn't break a needle or screw up timing. I did become adept at changing needles.

I tried to create a circuit board effect in the background of the quilt using a squared off meander. It was more fun that a curved meander for me. A little hard to photograph as the variegated thread blends quite well.

For the star points, I used a combination of swirls and smoky swirls.

You can get a better sense of the circuit board looking from the back.

After creating the four center motifs - I stippled around to create texture in the star centers. Each of the centers represents an interest of my younger nephew.

Binary code for the programmer, and a tennis racket and balls were fun to create.

I'm especially pleased with my steel pan and you can also see the continuous curve/swirl motif I used in the small squares.

Next step was binding. For some reason, the decision escapes me now, I decided to alternate the to dark colors on the binding. I created about 36 feet of binding. I am please to report that of my 21 joins to create the binding, I didn't sew any to the wrong side!

All pressed and ready to attach. I did this while waiting for the spool of thread to arrive. As mentioned above, they shipped promptly, so I was able to start finishing the background on Saturday instead of Monday. A good thing too as I likely would have needed to pull an all-nighter if it had arrived when tracking said it would. I had a lot of thread breaks using variegated thread. I did not have a comparable amount using a solid color of the same brand.

I decided I would go ahead and machine bind this one, so sewed the binding to the back of the quilt. Then decided I needed to hand stitch this one due to the color changes in the binding. Fortunately that is a portable task and was accomplished in a variety of locations during my vacation.

I had fun creating labels for each quilt - and these got created and stitched on on Thursday afternoon, just in time for the Friday presentation.

The boys are happy and the smiles say everything.

To me, this is upside down - but if this is the side he prefers this is how he should use it. I was questioning all that gray on the front of the quilt by the time I finished quilting and lint rolling it.

This is why we do what we do! I think Sean may use his quilt as an excuse to get a bigger bed now.

Linking to:

One Monthly Goal - Elm Street Quilts - Goal met!

PhD in 2022 - Quilting Gail - 2 Quilts completed this month (4 complete for the year)

Fabrics purchased at Calla Lily Quilts and JoAnne Fabrics

Pieced using Prescencia 60/3 on my Bernina 840 Record.

Quilted using a combination of Wonderfil, Aurifil, and Connecting Threads 50 weight thread on my Sweet Sixteen.

February Goals

My January was filled with momentum and my overall goal is to keep it up in February. 

I've got several quilty and non-quilty goals for the month. These are not necessarily presented in order.

Global goal - CLEAN and ORGANIZE. The impetus for this will be revealed later, but suffice it to say, I need to get a handle on my space. Plus, I feel more motivated to start something when I can easily find and reach the tools for a project. I've still got fabric in bags on the floor that needs to be organized and put away so that it can be used.  Case in point, while composing this paragraph I thought about a set of notes I made a few weeks ago - spent 20 minutes recycling paper. Never found the notes. I need a better system.

Journal - I would like to write in my quilt journal at least weekly if not more often.

Quilty Goals

One Monthly Goal for February & PhD in 2022

I am really enjoying these challenges as an organizing point. I have completed 2 of 12 UFO so far and 1 of 3 new/anticipated starts.  Achieving goals at the moment is easy because I have a few hard deadlines I'm trying to meet.

This month I have a lofty goal - to finish two quilts for my nephews. I pieced the Star Bright quilts last summer with the best intention of these being for Christmas. As we can see it is now February. Nephew one celebrated his birthday in January and nephew two will celebrate in March. I'll be travelling to Tallahassee this month and plan to gift them both while I'm there.

Star Bright for Christopher is almost done. I've completed all the background quilting and just have to add the motifs in the center of the stars. Then hopefully I can trim without mishap and wrap the backing to the front to create the binding.

Star Bright for Sean needs to be quilted. I've made my plan and I've got everything pressed. I do need to piece the backing and sandwich - so hopefully I can start quilting this in earnest by Saturday.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge & Table Scraps

This month's theme is Teal/Aqua. Awesome! I have lots of those fabrics. I've used the random number generator to select the blocks for the month. This will have to take a back seat though as I need to have the Star Brights done by February 16.  

I've decided to participate in Southwind Designs Penguin Parade Quilt Along. I see some technicolor/rainbow colored penguins in my future. They will make a fun addition to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.

Corgi Goals

Sera and I are launching our Rally Obedience Career this month starting during our trip to Florida. We have a lofty plan of 8 trials in 5 days - Hopefully we will come home with her Rally Novice title and perhaps even Rally Intermediate title.

We started Rally Obedience classes in October after she healed from her spay. She catches on quickly and most mistakes in class these days are on my end of the leash. So, fingers and paws crossed that I don't screw it up too badly. I'm so proud of my silly girl. We've come a long way in the last five months.

When I did Rally with Dash over a decade ago there were three titles (RN, RA (Advanced), RE (Excellent)).  The sport has really grown and there are now Master's and Championship titles to chase. Sera and I are starting to learn the Advanced signs and starting to practice our off lead work. She seems to enjoy it and I'm having fun with her.

Linking to:

February 2022 One Monthly Goal hosted by Elm Street Quilts