Bright Stars on Black Quilt Finished!

I mentioned I'd been working on the quilting of the Bright Stars on Black quilt but had to put it away while entertaining company. When I was ready for my living room to be taken over by my sewing machine and paraphernalia again, I brought it out and continued the job.

The first thing I did was figure out where my bright strips were going to go for the binding flange and then pieced the pieces together. I didn't have enough length or variety to match the colours of the inside stars, but I followed the general flow from one colour to the next as best I could.

I hand stitched the flange on all four sides to baste it in place and sewed the binding to the back instead of the front. That was so I could fold it over to the front,

 and use some more "big stitch" sewing to finish the binding.

I used two strands of floss (as I did in the center) and changed the colour to match the thread colour used for the stars in the border.

You can see the floss on the binding stitching
change from orange on the left to green on the right.

Although I did mitre the corners of the binding like usual, I simply overlapped the ends of the flange:

I like the colour it gives on the perimeter of the quilt, but the flange is rather sloppy, as you can see here,

 and here:

I think I could have pulled the flange tighter when I applied it (and that's what I'll try next time). Since this is put together already, I am considering sewing the flange down. It would be about the same amount of sewing as sewing a binding down. Or I could let go of perfection expectations and just enjoy a little "texture" on the quilt!

Before I sewed the binding on, I tucked in a hanging sleeve. The top is sewn in with the binding and the bottom is sewn by hand to the back of the quilt.

The sleeve doesn't run all the way to the edge of the
quilt. You leave a little room for the hanging hardware.

The sleeve was sewn from strips of the backing that were cut off the sides of the quilt. I had never thought of that before, but I'll keep it in mind. You often cut off about 4" when you trim a quilt and a hanging sleeve is usually made from an 8" strip. So sewing two of them together would usually work. (In case you're wondering why the hanging sleeve looks so loose, it's done on purpose to leave room for the hanging bar.)

Here is the quilt on a bed:

 The center part covers the width of the bed, and the border hangs over the edge nicely.

I didn't specifically plan for that it's not too surprising. By that I mean, if the centre had worked out to be much larger, I wouldn't have added a border. If it was much smaller, I would have added two borders. Although I didn't make it "for" my bed, I did want it to be a bigger quilt (without becoming a king size!)

I've shown the quilting I did in the center, but I don't think I've shown the borders. I did some dot-to-dot quilting between the border stars. (The straight lines below.)

I was going to echo the angle in the outer part of the border to get triangle shapes or maybe a zig zag, but when I drew it out (in chalk directly on the quilt) it just didn't work because I didn't put an equal amount of space between the stars. Then I thought of just going straight down the border adding simplified "line stars" wherever it seemed best. I liked it.

So I decided to add the same kind of stars between the centre stars. The first one I did had three "scattered" stars, not lining them up.

Then I realized it would be easier to just imitate the border stars and do the three of them on a continuous line:

That save me a few starts and stops.

At the sides where there was a little more space to fill up, I made a "T" at one end and added some stars there too.

In the areas where there was even more space, I again filled it in with scattered stars before realizing that three lines of stars would fill the space just as well. (Again, with many fewer starts and stops!)

Here is the entire quilt:

And the back:

The coloured floss is more visible to the eye than on camera, but I think you can get the idea.

Project Summary
This was a fun quilt to make. I started it in 2017 after two things happened. I saw the Pecking Order quilt tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Company and my first thought was that it would look great with bright fabric on a black background. Then soon after, I got a lot of black fabric! (A lot!) The fabric didn't have the best feel to it, but it was sold as quilt backing so I decided it was good enough quality to use. It was all in small chunks (about 11x17) with a few very long strips (which were great for the borders and binding!)

Since all the center blocks units are the same (the stars are created with the arrangements of the units), I pulled out some scraps and made units to my hearts content. I thought I had kept track, but when I finally got to putting the top together, I had enough for two tops!! This gave me plenty to chose from to make stars from units with similar colours. And once I had the stars together, I laid them out to figure out the arrangement. I really like the ombre rainbow effect, but I didn't go into the project planning it.

I like to use leftovers from the front on the back, so that is where the flying geese (the triangles) come from. The rest of the back is pieced from the never ending black fabric. Like I said, it doesn't have the best feel, but I just couldn't justify using other fabric when I had all this black fabric to use up. I pieced two 7x14 pieces together to end up with a 14x14 square. (All finished measurements, in case you're wondering how that worked.) Then I sewed the squares together, alternating the seam from horizontal to vertical so that two seams never met.

I didn't keep careful track, but I am quite sure that I did not buy any new fabric for this quilt. It helps when you get a boatload of black to work with and the rest of the pieces can use small scraps. But I did approach the quilt with an attitude of using what I had and seeing what I could make of it.

Size: 91" square
Started: September 2017
Finished: August 2019
Batting: wool
Pattern: centre based on the Pecking Order quilt by Missouri Star Quilt Company. I designed the rest, including borders.

Nine Patched: Trimmed and Bound

Last time I wrote about my Cardinal Nine Patch, it was quilted and waiting to be trimmed. I was looking for a place to do it because you really do need to layout the whole quilt. Right now I have no space in my house where I could do that.

I debated bringing it to my church which has rooms I could use, but it's too far away to just run there for an evening if I don't have to.

And then I thought about my local library, which seems to do a lot more than lend books. (I've noticed they have a lot of local groups that meet there regularly and it was there I participated in a free exercise program. It was the one that convinced me I am never going to do an exercise class again. I truly hate it.)

Back to the quilt...I called them up and explained that I was hoping to use a large room to do this one step on my quilt. She checked the calendar and told me they had a room free for me to use. Hot dog. So that night, I packed up the quilt (I had to use my largest rolling suitcase), my cutting mat and cutter and whatever else I thought I needed. What I did not bring was my camera so these pictures from my phone may not display very well.

The room did give me space to layout the quilt when I moved a few chairs out of the way:

I measured it in three places in both directions to see if it was mostly even. I think neither side was more than a half inch difference. Over 90-100", I thought that was ok. (The diagonal measurements checking for square were further off, but there's less I could do about that.)

Once I decided where to cut, I then crawled along on the floor with my cutting mat, ruler, and cutter trying to cut a straight edge on all four sides that was square with all the other sides.

In theory, I should be able to follow the edge of the quilt but real life is not that simple. Some places stretch out, some are pulled in, and so it goes. If you have a solid border of any width, you can even it out pretty easily. But I didn't want to cut into my squares very much because the difference in size would have been very obvious. (And for the hand sewn squares, it would have made the seams become unstitched!)  I made compromises and did the best I could.

Then it was time to think about the binding. I told you I had a great innovative idea and now I would see if it would work.

First I took extra 2.5" squares that I had from the quilt and pieced them into long rows, alternating lights and darks.

I also cut long strips of a solid fabric, wide enough to give me a final binding of 2.5"

I cut the long strip of squares in half and then sewed them to a strip of solid fabrci:

Here is a shot of the back after I stitched the seam:

The seams were pressed to the side so they would nest with the seams on the quilt.

After pressing the long seam toward the solid fabric, I had some 2.5" binding ready to go...

The great advantage of sewing a solid piece of fabric to the squares is that I wouldn't be sewing through the multiple layers of the seams when I sewed the binding to the back. The solid piece was wider than the squares and would carry past the fold. Oh, and it meant I didn't have to sew as many squares together!

Now that the binding was ready, I needed more space again. I would be sewing along all four sides of the quilt and there was no way I was going to be able to handle that in the space I have. Fortunately, a couple events came up so I was busy in town for the morning and evening of the same day, but had all afternoon to kill.

I brought everything I needed to the church and set myself up with four long tables. Yes, it took that many to be able to move this quilt around without it wanting to pull itself to the floor.

Then I started on the work, first pinning the binding to the quilt, one strip for each side. I was so eager to try out the binding and see if all my squares would line up, I forgot to fold the binding in half!

Fortunately I noticed before I sewed the seam. In the above picture, the solid fabric was folded up so the raw edge met the top edge, yielding a double binding strip. Then I could sew it.

Since I wanted all the checkerboard squares to line up, I didn't think I could do a continuous binding. I just didn't think I could figure out the exact length I would need to turn the corner and match the next intersection.

So I sewed a separate strip to each side and then did something I've never done before--sewed a mitered corner. I sewed a "V" shaped seam on the wrong side so that when I turned the corner right side out, I had a nice sewn mitered seam:

(I may or may not have used the hashtag "micdrop" when I posted this on Instagram. I was excited...)

Although it's pretty slick and I get the impression that it's what the judges want in juried shows, I'll stick to my folded continuous binding method. Since I have to trim the seam so close to the stitching line to reduce bulk, I think this method is actually less durable that the unsewn corner.

I managed to finish sewing all of the binding and corners in the time that I had that afternoon. When I left, all I had to do was sew the binding down on the backside. It was a long process, so it made it to a couple IG posts:

When I just started and had 382 more inches to go.

Nearing the end and on the home stretch...

But finally, last night, at well past my bedtime, it was done!!

I couldn't imagine a better binding for this quilt:

I love it.