Monday 4 August 2014

Flowering Lone Star

** Update: I was away when this was post published and didn't know that Melissa was so kindly allowing me to giveaway a copy of the pattern. Come back later in the week for a chance to win! **

I have followed Melissa at Sew BitterSweet Designs since taking part in the Lovely Year of Finishes last year. She put out a call for some pattern testers a little while back and the pattern was a lone star. I love stars. So I just had to give it a go.

The last time I did a Lone star pattern it involved several tiny ones (6" stars) encompassing a slightly larger one, and it was foundation pieced (picture here). This time the lone star measures almost 50" and is just pieced!

It didn't take me too long to decide on the fabrics, these just sort of jumped out at me! Some bright,  yummy Kona solids.




The pattern was well written and really easy to follow. The hardest part of it was cutting all the pieces. The fun bit was then to decide on the actual layout. I arranged the pieces in different ways, consulted with my kids but when I didn't like their choice (the top left pic) it confirmed the layout I wanted to go with.



The final star looked like this:




The next step were the y-seams. I am not a fan of y-seams. The pattern explained well how to do it and they worked, with a lot of starch and a heavy iron! I just didn't like doing it! 

Flowering Lone Star
I knew I didn't want to do any more y-seams so to avoid that I pieced some stars using HST instead using all the colours from the front. I placed the stars in the corners so they would be in the white space on the front to help determine my quilting pattern. 

Back of the Flowering Lone Star

Basted and ready to quilt. I struggled with how to quilt this. I attempted a variety of ideas but was stomped because wanted to match the thread to the front and also to the back. I read a lot of well known FMQ blogs and books and most will say they use the same thread top and bobbin. But I didn't want to do this and it gave me a lot of grief. I eventually got the tension right which meant that my dark top thread doesn't show (too much) on the light backing fabric. If you look too closely little dots can be seen on the back, but I can live with that. 

So to start with I did some simple straight line quilting on the large lone star. I haven't yet decided if I am going to do some more quilting on the star or leave it as it is.




I am quite heavily free motion quilting in the white space corners. I outlined the star from the back and then pebbled out from the star points. I have then done a maze filler pattern in the remaining area.



I am happily quilting but it's taking me much longer than I thought it would, as these things often do. 

Melissa is launching her pattern today and I had hoped I would have finished the quilting to show off her great pattern. But sadly it is not finished. So here is my quilt as it stands at the moment.


Back




3 comments:

  1. Your versions of the quilt are absolutely stunning! Thank you so much for testing!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. wow this is really looking lovely. you are doing a fantastic job

    ReplyDelete
  3. BEAUTIFUL !
    THANKS FOR SHARING!

    msstitcher1214@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete