Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Stargazer

Stargazer, designed by Rebecca Bryan, is a block-of-the-month I did last year. It was a big challenge, and after I was done with it, I felt so physically and mentally exhausted that I didn't want to look at it for quite awhile. So I put it away for a whole year ... but I finally decided it's time to quilt this.

Although I usually choose to quilt my quilts to death, I decided to try something different here for a change. I wanted to emphasize the beautiful geometric nature of this quilt, so I did a lot of dot-to-dot geometric quilting. This is the most sparse quilting I've ever done, and honestly it's kind of scary.

However, I didn't want the whole quilt to be composed of straight lines, so I slipped some swirls and continuous curves into what I consider the focal point of the quilt: the center.

I also reflected these designs on the directional points of the quilt.

The color palette of this quilt is so striking with the purples and teals. It was what initially drew me to this pattern, but it presented a dilemma during quilting. If I quilted this very densely, I would likely have to keep changing threads, and I really didn't want to do that. But by quilting sparsely, I managed to get away with just using one color: purple.

Quilting this quilt was nowhere near as challenging as piecing it, but the super bumpy corners did present a little bit of hardship. Miraculously, I didn't break a needle, and I now feel a bit more confident about thick seams in general ... because if my machine can handle this quilt, it can probably handle anything I throw at it!

When the quilt top was first completed, I remembered thinking it was beautiful but lacked a little bit of soul. Solid quilts tend to have that problem for me. But now, I'm really, really happy with it, and I think it has soul now.

5 comments:

  1. Whoa, I'll bet that design was a bit of a challenge, but it's another pretty one! You've done well with the quilting, and I'm glad you like it now.

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  2. It definitely has soul. Really striking, graphic designed quilts can be a challenge to figure out how to quilt. You struck a beautiful balance of letting the design shine and adding your touch to the quilt to help it shine. There's nothing wrong with a lot of quilting, quilt the LIFE into it (not quilt it to death, that's not true)!

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  3. I've heard of "quilting the life into it," and now I've seen "quilt the soul into it"! Very striking piece, bold and dynamic. Congrats on another wonderful finish :)

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  4. Gorgeous!

    Michelle
    https://mybijoulifeonline.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kathy,
    Another beautiful quilt! My first impression was WOW! I Love seeing your quilts, since you do such nice work. Enjoy it!
    petuniakr@aol.com

    ReplyDelete

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