Feathered Stars

Smack in the middle of winter...not a whole lot of cooperation with the weather,  The day that I tried to take a picture of this entire quilt there was very flat light.  But you get the idea...it's 78" of pretty feathered star blocks.  And it was destined for a custom job.

This quilt has a wool batting, and Glide thread on much of it.  On the colored areas I tried out a Fantastico sample that must have come in a MQX bag last year.  I dont think I have ever bought it. Its a 40wt variegated in shades of green, brown.  It's kind of non-descript, but contained many of the colors on the HST border.  The borders are wide, and I opted for some swirling feathers.  These are pretty but take a while to make out and stitch.

Pretty corner...

The feathered star blocks have no shortage of curved cross-hatching, stitched with my 20" boomerang.  It gives a nice texture to the background.  I SID nearly every seam on the quilt, unless it was pressed open.   To give the feathered star some detailing, I pulled out one of my simple stencils.

 Now, most of us can stitch a feathered wreath in our sleep.  I chose the stencil because I wanted all 9 to look identical AND because I was stitching with a contrasting thread, so the nonuniformities would be that much more visible.  Stencils are a simple fun way to incorporate part of a design into your quilt.  Lastly, I added an echoed leaf shape into the larger triangles.

 The feathered stars are pretty.  The fact that they are pretty and visually interesting helps to draw the eye away from the 8-pt stars along the sashings.  This was an area I struggled with.  The quilt owner had difficulty with the piecing of the square-in-square, and I didn't know what to do when many of the points were chopped off.  I wondered if I ditched the square if they'd look worse.  All I knew is that they didn't look good before I quilted the tight swirls.  As it turns out, the swirls help to recede them to the background, and the pretty feathered stars draw your eye away from them -- a winning combination.  Not everybody is perfect in their piecing.  More importantly, everyone's standards on what piecing is acceptable are different.  It's my job to figure out how to quilt for each quilt, bringing out the best features.

I am now up to my proverbial eye-balls in snow...two snow days this week (30" fell!) already and a potential 3rd one tomorrow, to give another 8-12".  I cannot imagine where we will put it.  I am plugging ahead on a very detailed custom of the Ladies of the Seas quilt, hoping it will be done this weekend.  It's gorgeous!