A Much Anticipated Collection from the Long Arm Quilter

While I was away on vacation the professional quilter in my neighbourhood was busy quilting the two quilts that I’ve been working on since Christmas. The square in a square lap quilt was a summer practice project and the star four patch kind of just happened a while after.

Quilted and Ready for Binding

Now it’s time for binding, a task I plan to take on one day when there is some reasonable light to work by and when I’ve got a couple of more urgent sewing chores out of the way. I got the off-cuts from the backing fabric back, but not the left over batting. I’ll have to ask for the batting back next time as I can use it for pot holders.

There’s enough backing fabric left from the square in a square quilt to use for binding as the colours tone in really well, so that’s the latest version of the plan. At this stage I am not planning to mitre the corners but I am thinking about hand stitching the biding down on the reverse of the quilt. I’m not sure about that one because I don’t enjoy hemming by hand and because I suspect the seam will be stronger sewn on the machine. Maybe I’ll test it out on the smaller of the two quilts and make my decision about the larger quilt after that.

And there was Much Rejoicing

The star four patch quilt top is done!!

Star Four Patch Quilt Top

I had originally planned cornerstones, but then got lazy and decided not to. But the universe provided in the form of a measurement error so in the end I HAD to make cornerstones. And I’m glad it went that way.

Star Four Patch Progress Report

I started a star four patch quilt a little while ago and plan to make it a 4 x 5 block quilt. When possible I do a little work each day, sometimes cutting, sometimes piecing, sometime pinning, sometimes pressing and sometimes some of each of those activities.

My grand total is 7 completed blocks today.

And I’m happy with that.

Seven done - 13 to go

Colour Value Decision – The Decision is Go

I’ve been working very hard at my four patch stars and I’m still very happy with the look, though I can’t quite get over that sweatshop feeling when I’m doing intensive piecing.

I had a decision to make about a block with much paler colour value pink star points that looked a bit washed out and kind of blah compared to the others with darker value star points.

Those of you who also quilt will know there’s a pretty big investment in every block so I was reluctant to get rid of it, but at the same time it didn’t look quite right. So I brought my beloved into the decision and asked him what he thought of the blocks I’d finished so far. He immediately picked that something was wrong with the block with the pink star points, attributing the problem to the higher intensity of the centre squares compared to the points.

I’m not sure I agree with his analysis but the conclusion is clear. That block had to go. I think it will work quite nicely as a feature of the quilt back though.