Priscilla's Star

I want to open a new static page of all the quilts completed this year and then refer to the posts where I showed it's progress. I then realized that I haven't post about some of them for various reasons.

This quilt was started in 2004 in a class taught by Priscilla Bianchi from Guatemala. She brought some hand woven Gautemala fabric and made up kits for this class. This fabric has very interesting patterns and is in wonderful colours. The draw back is that it is loosely woven and thicker than the cotton we worked with. In this Hexagon stars that we made, 6 points is meeting in the middle and the thick fabric made it necessary to be very aware of the direction you press the seams. I heavily starch the fabric before I cut it. The starch prevent fraying and ensure that seams stayed flat after pressing. The Gautemala fabrics are combined with cotton fabric in the stars. The background fabric and border fabric is hand dyed and coloured by Langa Lapu fabrics. The centre star is a commercial print cotton  fabric.

 Although I finished the piecing in 2004 shortly after I took the class, I only quilted it this year. I  took it off the frame in July. I love making a piped binding in the way Ricky Tims do it, but for this quilt I tried another way. Here you combine two strips lengthwise for the binding. The one strip is 1/2 inch wider than the other and then form the Faux piping. The advantage of this and Ricky's binding is that you can machine sew it on- there is no hand sewing and the results is very good.

I always look for quilting patterns that I can do from "My Head" where I do not have to trace a pattern. I choose quilting designs that is continuous so that there is few starts and stops- a potential place where threads can unravel. I have been quilting feathers for so long that I can easily do it from my head- as long as I draw a middle line. The advantage of feathers is;
It is always beautiful
It can fill any space
There is a lot of variations possible
It is elegant
It compress the fabric near the middle of the design and then puff out on the edges, this variation (flat and puffy) make the design interesting and pull the eye over the surface.

So all though it took a long time Priscilla's Stars is completed.

I have used a flannel backing and a wool batting inside. I will use this quilt as a blanket, the cats already start to lay on it. I also made sure that I washed the quilt to get all the starch out. it is now nice and soft and will not be attacked by fish moths.