Feeling stressed and tired with work, I knew that I wanted something that could be put together easily. My plan was to keep the piecing simple and make the quilting more of a feature. I think I had been watching a lot of Angela Walter’s ‘The Midnight Quilter’ on YouTube.
The pattern is ‘Charming Stars’ by Stefanie Roman. At the time, 5 years ago(!) It was published and available for free on the Moda Bake Shop website, but the links I have for the pattern don’t seem to work any more and I cannot find it on the Moda site when I search for it. It is a simple design and is based around charm squares, so that if you buy all the fabric as charm packs there is very little cutting to do - making it quick to get started. I think I changed the borders a little.
I use fabric from a range of sources, some charm packs, some FQs and some yardage. To make it personal to my sister, instead of using appliqué like I had for Sanchia’s quilt, I chose fabrics with prints that represented things that are important to her. Allison initially thought about having a red and green themed quilt, but we decided that this might make it rather Christmassy, so she opted to have a red white and blue theme and I think that she mentioned a beach or coastal theme too. I spent about a year finding fabrics before starting to cut and sew. There are crabs to represent her birth date (we are not into astrology, but she is ‘Cancer’); elephants because she collected them as a child; lots of anchors and sea-themed prints, both because our father was in the Royal Navy, and to go with the coastal theme; Mickey Mouse prints because she is a Disney fan; and various other things. I had wanted fabric with darts and rugby balls, but could not find anything.
This was quilted on my domestic machine, I really wanted to use a few different free motion motifs and especially wanted to incorporate feathers I did practice on some spare quilt sandwiches, especially as I do not have stitch regulation on my machine. I also included her name and the name of her partner, son and dog in the quilting, and I think her birthdate or year somewhere. I also made a label using free motion quilting.
The backing is made up of large blocks. Usually I would use 100% cotton, but the fabric with the watches is poly cotton - however I had to use it has we had found it together at the market in her town and the print is actually all of watches from the company Rotary Watches - our father worked for them for about 25 years, from the moment he left the Navy, after 22 years, to the moment he retired. Who knows how the fabric came into being, but I knew it would be special to my sister.
This nearly ended in disaster - on the way to my sisters it began to rain - only a disaster because I had tucked a little red tissue paper into the top of the gift bag, it got wet and stained all of that part of the quilt red. As soon as I arrived, instead of leisurely presenting to my sister I had to sort of say so sorry cold wash washing machine now please! Om my gosh - it took I think 5 full washes to get out the staining! I thought that I was going to have to somehow unpick the quilting and cut the fabric to repair the damage. Anyway, all was well in the end and it has been in constant use ever since.
Comments