The Calgary Long Arm Group enters a group submission each year to the Heritage Park Festival of Quilts. This year, we decided that we would make quilts using the Hunter Star block and a layout in the
Hidden Treasures book by Deb Tucker. Further, one of our members is Gail of
Erie Quilt Art and she is a certified Studio 180 instructor who offered to do a class for the group on how to use the Rapid Fire Hunter Star tool to create the blocks. So I took the class and made the top - even found a backing. That was about a year ago. Suddenly it's March this year and Heritage Park is coming up fast! Time to get this quilt quilted.
How? Well - it has stars so that's a good place to start. I made some star templates using my new Scan'n'Cut - it worked beautifully. Now I have a set of stars that I can use as templates over and over!
I quilted a couple of stars in the border by the "racing stripes" that are the same shape as the "Hunter Stars". The thread is variegated Fabulux - the same thread I used on the coloured parts of the blocks. I really like it.
Using my star templates, I stitched stars into two opposite corners. The remainder of the border is quilted - but in black so it doesn't show.
I started off with a completely different idea for quilting. But then a little
Sue Patten video popped up on Facebook and I thought - hey, I've got two of her books and I took a few classes with her last summer at the CQA show in Toronto - I should actually use some of her ideas! Her approach to "feathers" is a bit different - she does a continuous clockwise movement - no backtracking, no stopping/starting. This takes some practice! Also - she doesn't claim to do "feathers" - she says she does "feather-ish" designs. It took me a few blocks to get the hang of this - but it's very efficient once you get going on it. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. So that's the design in the triangles. The design in the sashing and in the "stars" is my thing.
I waffled between the variegated and neon thread. In the end, I did the variegated in the coloured parts and yellow on the black part - except for the two stars by the stripes. I wanted the quilting to really show up and I think the yellow was the best choice for that but I also really like the look of the variegated. Both are
Wonderfil Fabulux thread, which runs very well in my machine.
The other thing about this quilt is that I went fabric shopping in my stash - I had picked up a yard each of the bright batik prints the previous summer on my road trip with Carol and I used every scrap of black that I had left. So I got the top made entirely from stash, which I love!
