Sunday 16 June 2013

Solar Stars Mini Quilt

So it started with the idea of stars while taking the Craftsy course "Designing Modern Quilts" with Weeks Ringle.  One of the ideas was Beyond The Block, looking at a design concept as a whole.  I came up with this idea really from playing with curves and gradient colours on Photoshop Elements while thinking of giant red stars but I had no idea how to make it.

 So I decided to procrastinate as you do and go shopping.  I bought a fat eight bundle of Kona solids in sunny colours and Kona Midnight from Fluffy Sheep Quilting and I just love these colours together.  Totally gorgeous.  One of Week's lessons was to make a mini-quilt and test the idea out so a fat eight was perfect.
Even in mini size I didn't know how to go about getting the exact curve of the large sun and I pondered this for a while.  Eventually I figured out I needed a pattern so I printed my original design in black and white and enlarged it by just over 200%.
I was fairly sure I wanted inset circles but some of the circles would be small in mini so I decided to try inset and needle turn applique and test out which suited the design best.  So I inset the large star and appliqued the smaller two.
I love the inset - it is so clean and crisp and perfect.  And I found them easier than the needle turn applique which I definitely need to practice.
I had the idea of small stars in the background so I decided to hand tie my mini-quilt (never tied a quilt before-really great fun!). I put in the constellation the Plough in the blue pearl cotton and a few white stars surrounding but it was too much so I took a few out.  All ready to be washed and take out my markings and hopefully get a nice finish.

When I eventually get around to making this in large size I think I'd hand embroider stars in the background fabric and do concentric rings in the stars.  Still I'm very pleased with my first attempt at design and I learned a lot from making this mini.  Espeially how important it is to match the binding to the star colours which was a little tricky but well worth it.

Linking up to Ellison Lane Quilt's Modern Mini Challenge

5 comments:

  1. I like your finished mini. I think it's really cool.

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  2. I really enjoyed reading about your mini...it is awesome'

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  3. So fun! I love how it turned out! I'm amazed how close you got it to look to the original.

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  4. Thanks! When I saw the Kona Sunrise bundle I had to order them. I'm amazed there are so many tiny colour variations available - they were just perfect for this project.

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  5. So interesting to read about your design process, and what a neat result! I like the idea of embroidered stars on the full quilt.

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