Finished Product

I've been so crazy busy with dry-walling and painting my studio.  I highly recommend checking out my progress on the studio (that's quilting related right?).  Renovation 800: The Colour of Insanity.

But otherwise I have finally finished this Zodiac Star quilt for my special little niece who I have yet to meet.  She has pretty blue eyes and I think this quilt will suit her just right.

Anyone who caught previous posts would perhaps remember the ins and outs of the construction process I used so I'll keep my description simple.

I cut out the parallelograms using my Go Baby, and built the star around the center blocks (because I wanted to have a single block of fabric to work with).  It ended up being a fairly simple process which you can find a tutorial for HERE.  I'm planning to use a bunch of trapunto in an upcoming project so I decided to test the process on this quilt.  I used Leah Day's trapunto tutorial and proceeded to quilt tiny little pebbles (also a test run).  My pebbling after 12 9x9 blocks around fairly complicated motifs is much improved.

Front

After all that pebbling I just couldn't bring myself to continue quilting so densely on this baby quilt.  Plus if I didn't finish soon the baby was sure to be a toddler!  So I did some stitching in the ditch and left it at that.  I have been feeling bombarded with projects (mostly construction related) and decided to give machine sewing a binding a try for the first time... ugh!  Big mistake.  I thought I had done enough research, maybe I just rushed it I'm not sure but it sure didn't turn out the way I was hoping (although I'm thinking this is just another learning curve).  Thankfully I'm sure little Daylia won't mind in the least.

Back

The back of the quilt is pretty cool, although my photography skills could obviously use a little work, hahaha.  I seriously didn't even notice my shadow until I was typing this post. 

Things I learned making this quilt:

1. Use spray starch on the 'Y' seams.

2. Use bigger and better batting for trapunto.

3. Stitch pebbles in a larger scale.

4. Do not bother to stitch pebbles or any other complicated design on a patterned fabric, you never see it! 

5. I need more practice at machine binding.  Or a better technique.  Or maybe just more practice. 

 I'm linking up with the most talented Canadian fiber artists, over at The Needle and Thread Network.  I have found time to read all the blogs and adventures (or misadventures) in fiber art.  I just haven't been able to comment.