Big Star Quilt

This big star quilt belongs to Michelle. It's enroute back to her in California as I type this. This large 96" or so quilt is made from mostly Michael Miller prints. They are very soft and modern, and thinner than many quiltshop grade fabrics available right now. Living in the So Cal climate, she likes the lightness of the quilt. I, personally, found them quite a bit harder to tension. They were more succeptible to causing small tension adjustments. But, that's my problem.
The green and pink print below is my favorite. It reminds me of a dress my daughter had. It's a bit more nostalgic than the other modern florals. Michelle basically said "do whatever" (E2E on the body) and quilt something different on the blue borders. Leave it to me to select a pattern that wasn't really all that quick to stitch!

The free-handed meandering feathers-nfronds look great, but they took a surprisingly long amount of time - about 2 hours more than I anticipated. They are essentially a scaled down version of the Plumage pantograph. Since I feathered the body of the quilt, I chose something non-feathery for the borders...something to tie in with all the swirly fronds and the flowers on the fabrics.

Here is a look at the back...It is a fabric I used on a quilt a few years ago for my MIL. It is actually a soft aqua, with words on it like "family", "peace", etc. The one thing I found challenging with this quilt was thread color selection. I wanted it to look good on the top and backside, since the back is mostly neutral. The back is aqua, while the top is an odd olive shade. When I auditioned aqua thread on the top, it seemed out of place. The top is seen the most, so I want the top to be better. In the end, I chose an muted olive (some may call this baby-poop, but it actually works very well with a multitude of colors!). It blends with the background around the star. To me, this is the intuitive place that the thread ought to "disappear". The downside is that the olive thread is quite evident on the soft aqua backing. Oh well! It does look good, and what's a gal to do when aqua and olive are the colors ?!? The top thread is Superior Omni, bobbin is Bottomline, and batting is Hobbs 80/20.

I believe that this quilt will be given to the client's MIL.

Happy weekend :-)