Sunday 23 April 2017

Stars All Around


Back in 2013, I picked up 14 quilting rulers at an antique mall. You can read about it in Shopping Trip: Shoes, Fabric, Books and 14 Quilting Rulers! I'm not sure why they were at an antique mall. They certainly aren't antiques. I suppose they might be considered collectables to us quilters. 😉 But I'm not complaining - I got them for very good prices!
Since then I have determined to use each ruler in at least one quilt. To this end, I have searched for books, or at least instructions, for using each of these rulers. 
This is the book I found for using with the BiRangle ruler: It's got some beautiful patterns. I chose to use Stars All Around to create a quilt for one of my newest great nephews. The original pattern was a square, so I enlarged it to make it a more appropriate size. I had picked up a fabric bundle in blues at a Creative Stitches Show, but ended up switching up some of the fabrics. 
The instructions in the book have you cut bias strips, according to the angle on the ruler, stitching the strips together, alternating fabrics, 
then cutting these into strips, 
and finally cutting these strips into individual rectangles using the BiRangle ruler. 
It's a bit of a fiddley quilt, and that's probably why I put it aside to work on other projects, 
Work in progress on my design wall
but it's finally finished, now that Aiden's a year old.
Here's the backing fabric I used: 

It's a Boy Scout fabric from Timeless Treasures. 
I used a pantograph called Shooting Stars for the quilting and did it at my LQS with a variegated red, cream and blue King Tut thread. Unfortunately, the only machine there that can accomodate pantographs is an older Handi Quilter that is not stitch-regulated. Even though I increased the stitching speed to 100%, I still ended up with BIG stitches.
And the machine tends to drift, so the quilting is not as neat. I'm not sure what's causing that. I know how to quilt on a longarm, but I don't know all of the different adjustments that can be made, so I don't know how to fix this. But it does need to be fixed somehow. I don't think I'll quilt there again unless I plan on doing free motion on the Tin Lizzie. 
And the bad news is it's snowing again today. 
Really??? Where is spring?

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