This baby quilt top has been sitting in my "To Quilt" pile for a couple of months. I used leftover scraps from previous baby quilts.
Although you probably can't see it clearly, I used the white bubble fabric I got a while back for the sashing and outer border.
This is the third ? asterisk baby quilt I've made. The pattern evolved from a Craftsy.com block of the month from 2012. I've found that this is a good pattern to use up scrap bits.
Here's a pic of the completed top.
I used pins for basting the quilt sandwich together. My preferred method is to use spray baste and then heat set it with an iron.
But this time I followed Cindy Needham's technique of tensioning the quilt back and that worked really well...for the backing. I did get some shifting with the top which showed up in lots of ripples when I did my ditching to secure all the layers. Perhaps I didn't have my tensions set correctly with my walking foot.
At any rate, I picked out all the stitching I had done, which took me the better part of a day. After that I set my maching stitch to "baste" (6mm) and only stitched down the center of the sashing.
Then I stitched around each triangle using my quilting foot instead. Yes, I had to go really slow to get a straight line, but I was glad I did and pleased with the results.
I began with quilting flowers in each quadrant.
Later I decided that they needed more emphasis so I went back and echoed each flower.
I had a lot of fun making the bubbles in the sashing. I didn't want to overquilt that area so I did a single column with larger bubbles in the intersections.
For the outer border I did a simple accordian style wavy line. It was hard not to try to make straignt lines with equal spacing in between, but I forced myself to go "Organic".
"Organic" is my new mantra this season in my quilting journey. I define this concept as: not structured, not perfect.
I'm linked up with FMQ Project Link-up over at The Free-Motion Quilting Project.
Thanks for stopping by. Happy Quilting!
~Diane
It's a lovely quilt, Diane. The spirals centres in the flowers are really effective, and to me the overall design looks like lots of jolly coloured union jacks. I like your quilting motto for the year - much the same the same approach as mine. I'm never quite sure what I'm going to do until I actually get started.
ReplyDeleteThis is so sweet and your quilting is delightful.
ReplyDeleteThis quilt is adorable! The quilting makes it even more adorable!
ReplyDeleteWow! I love the way the spirals and circles pop in the white spaces. Super pretty!
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