Quilt+ Star Dance Quilt Along – Week 6 – Quilt Reveal
Today is week 6 in the Quilt+ Star Dance Quilt Along! Our very last post!
I’m so excited to bring you the reveal today.
Find all my posts about the quilt along right here.
Quilt Along Schedule
August 9 – We will be making 6 blocks.
August 16 – We will be making 6 blocks.
August 23 – We will be making 6 blocks and sewing our blocks together to make our quilt top.
August 30 – We will finish our quilt and show off our quilting.
Custom Quilt Labels
[easy-image-collage id=17147]
Make this Quilt
- Star Dance Introduction
- Star Dance Quilt Pattern
- Star Dance block video tutorial
- Custom Quilt label designed especially for Star Dance
Tips for Finishing Your Quilt
- Make backing and cut batting – For me, I like to make my backing and batting both measure 6″ bigger than my quilt top. For Star Dance that means 66″ square. If you have a standard size you tend to make yours, go for it.
- Basting – I always spray baste my quilts on a wall. It saves my poor knees from all the crawling around. I’ve got a wall basting tutorial for you here if you are interested. If you prefer pin basting, don’t let me hold you back!
- Quilting – I like to think of quilting as the calm after the storm. I do all this work to get my quilt made, and then I just relax, zone out, put on some music and start free motion quilting. Here’s a tutorial for a basic meander if you’ve never done it before.
- Binding – I machine bind. It’s quicker and stronger and by the time I get to the binding of a quilt, I’m ready to call it a day. I have a machine binding tutorial for you here. Kudos, if you prefer hand binding. I do think it’s much more lovely than the machine style.
Just in case you are interested in how I quilted my own quilt: Within each star I quilted a different design. There were about 5-6 different designs I used, such as: meander, twirls, circlies, stuff like that. On the four corners of each block I quilted little loopy peaks and then on the background, I just quilted squiggly lines running down the length.
It’s very thickly quilted, much thicker than I normally do. I always thought that adding different components of free motion quilting would go too slow, but I have to say it was not that much trouble and I really like the effect.
I also swapped up my thread color for the different stars. I’ve made them NOT match and this makes the quilting stand out even more.
The Landslide Quilt
[easy-image-collage id=17151]
Many of you have reached out to me to tell me that you love my normal meandering style of quilting. Thank you! You are precious! I love it too. I mixed it up with more details in this particular quilt only because this one is going to be hanging in Coats & Clark’s booth at one of their thread shows and required more details to show off their brand new thread.
I will definitely not be doing this for every quilt I make, but it’s nice to know that I’m capable to do so if I ever want to. 🙂
Let’s talk about the solids
So if you’ve been a reader here for some time, you know that solids are so far the opposite of me. I like my prints! Still, I think it’s important to step outside of the box here and there. I really enjoyed the solids I used. I don’t like them as much as I like prints, but they definitely have a certain POP that prints just don’t have.
I could easily see me using them again in a quilt. Maybe mixing them with prints, maybe.
This much was true though: Lynn from Coats & Clark told me solids shows off quilting better and she was absolutely right. The solids paired with the 30 wt. Quilt+ thread makes the quilting I did jump off the quilt.
Luckily for me, I stuck to easier quilting designs that I had done in the past.
If you are interested in the particular solid fabrics I used in this quilt, you can find them here. And because I never fail to get asked where my low volumes come from, here’s a link for that too.
What’s next
If you are at the end of this quilt along and wondering what’s next, it’s the “I am Enough” Quilt Along of course. That one is going to be a lengthy sampler quilt that I’m rubbing my hands together to get started on. Find the details here.
Don’t forget to visit my feed on Instagram this evening. If you’ve been posting your progress photos of your Star Dance quilt, you could win three boxes of the Quilt+ thread.
Also, if you are interested in ordering a custom quilt label designed especially for this quilt, you’ll find the details for that here.
Good luck!
6 Comments