Rainbow Lonestar

Here is one of my most recent client quilts.  I knew Kari from years ago when I hosted the Four Seasons Quilt Swap and the Spring Fling Round Robin.  It has been several years, though, since I have done or hosted a swap on account of longarming quilting.  Last week when my youngest two kids were at Nana's for 2 days, and my oldest had day camp, I dared to get it out and see if it could be done.  A better way to say that is "dare to see if I could be focused enough given that the weather was hot and beautiful to quilt 6 hours a day!".  I actually finished it up last weekend, but close enough.  I have a bunch of easier and smaller quilts for this summer, but this one still needed quilting, and I didn't want to leave it for September.

 Stats:
about 69" square, single layer Hobbs 80/20 batting.  Threads used include red Superior Omni and black Glide.  I remember Kari mentioning she thought she wanted some color on the massive black background.  I did not want to create this garish background that would compete with the star though.  I decided that the red was the dominant color, and went with it.  It has color, but it is still subtle.

These corners and setting triangles are large areas to fill.  I gave them a combination of feathers, cross-hatching (reminiscent of spider webbs, eh?...seemed appropriate with the butterflies) and a couple fillers.You all now how I love the look of cross-hatching!

The quilting in  body of the star was kept simpler mostly because these diamonds are relatively small, and details won't really show.  On the center (below), which has the butterflies, I outlined the butterflies and tacked down the center with a little star.  There's gobs of bulk at the center to do too much.

 It has wonderful texture, and a subtle coloring.

The red shows as an octagon.  Hopefully, Kari will like this when it sails her way in a couple weeks (she's on holiday).  Can't wait to see it finished and bound :-)