Dawn Star

I was walking through QuiltCon a few years ago when I wandered into the booth of Jennifer Sampou. She had Dawn Star displayed in her booth, and I fell in love with that quilt. I bought the pattern and fabric right then and there.

But it took me a few years to actually make the quilt because I was scared. Despite it being a "kit", because of the ombre nature of the fabric, there's a level of improvisation in the piecing, something that has always scared me.

But what doesn't scare me is the quilting process, as I had the idea of how I was going to quilt it before I even finished piecing it. Dawn Star had some fully complete double stars but also quite a few "incomplete" blocks, which is what makes it fun and surprising. I quilted it as if every star is complete, creating the ghost block outlines where necessary.

The quilting is mostly straight lines, geometric designs that emphasize the stars, with just a few patches of spaces where I couldn't resist but add a few swirls.

By a stroke of good luck, I figured out an efficient quilt path early on, making this a quick and fun quilting experience. The piecing was very stressful because of my tendency to cast doubts on my fabric choices at every turn, but the quilting was so enjoyable and relaxing!

Lotus

I did a lot of longarm quilting last year but I was not in the mood for piecing for much of the year. Finally toward the end of the year I decided to piece Lotus, because I just loved the fabric too much and it demanded to be played with. Both the pattern (Lotus) and the fabric line (Bluish) is by Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic, who is my all-time favorite fabric designer.

When I started designing the quilting for Lotus, all I could think of were feathers. I love the beautiful elegance of feathers but they don't work for every quilt, but I just knew it'd look great here.

But I wanted to quilt a few blocks differently, so I quilted swirls in a block here and there.

I kept to very simple straight lines in the darker colored fabrics. Bluish is so stunning that I really didn't want the quilting to overwhelm it.

I was so excited to get to quilt all these feathers, and so happy with the final finish. Next to straight lines, feathers are one of the my favorite designs to run my hands over.

Compared to how heavily I usually quilt my quilts, Lotus is pretty lightly quilted, which means it actually feels kind of squishy in my hands. I'm really in love with it!

Trellis

Continuing my trend last year of quilting the "pedestal" quilt tops, the ones I really love and want to finish, I decided to start the year with Trellis. Trellis was one of two quilt tops that came out of my #100Days100Blocks2018 challenge ... and wow, I just realized that means it's more than 6 years old. Sometimes I can't really feel time passing, until I suddenly realize children I haven't seen for awhile are all grown up, or a quilt top I felt like I only worked on not that long ago is actually 6 years old.

But never mind the nostalgia train. I was very happy when I pulled out Trellis out of the pile and realized it looked as beautiful as I remembered. (Sometimes a quilt top is a lot less pretty than I remembered!) The pattern is by Tula Pink, and the fabric by Elizabeth Hartman. Since it is a sampler block quilt, the only parts tying it together is the frames, so I quilted those all the same: with simple lines.

The background calls for some dense swirls so that they recede into the space. The focal point of this quilt is after all the lovely and different quilt blocks.

The fun part of this quilt is really figuring out what to quilt for each block. I didn't do much advanced planning, and just quilted it with whatever I felt like at the time. I picked a few basic staples that always look good on busier fabric, and they are geometric designs, straight lines, feathers, continuous curves, and a few linear designs that look good on longer strips.

I usually plan every detail of the quilting out before I start, so doing this sort of spontaneously is a nice change. Even though each block is different, using just a few consistent designs and using the same design on the frames ties things together nicely.

I'm so glad I started the year off with such a rainbow beauty! I have a lot of plans for 2025 (not quilting related) so I don't think I can finish as many this year, but we'll see how many I manage.