Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2012

Amy's Creative Side is hosting a Blogger's Quilt Festival!  I'm linking up Mrs.Star and will share the story behind her.

Welcome to my living room!  This bright, happy quilt greets you with plenty of cheer!

I fell in love with Annie's Farm Stand fabric the first time I saw it and began collecting it shortly thereafter, ending up with over 40 different AFS fabrics in my stash, thanks to Marie Madeline Studio and several Etsy shops.  I have always loved star quilts, and when I saw the Sparkle Plenty quilt pattern, I knew that Annie's Farm Stand coupled with a black dotted fabric would look awesome, so I jumped in and began cutting squares. Do you know how hard it is to cut out fabric you absolutely love?  It is frightening, nerve-wracking, and exhilarating at the same time!

After I had completed my collection of Annie's Farm Stand fabrics, I showed the huge pile to several people and told them that I would be re-doing my living room in these fabrics.  One looked around at my current living room and said, "But your living room is so pretty now!"  An unnamed male rolled his eyes.  Maybe you should know that my living room has been decorated in muted tones of Thimbleberries fabrics for over six years, so Annie's Farm Stand is a big change.

I forged ahead anyway ... and began Mrs.Star.

There were too many quilt blocks to fit on my design wall at the same time, so I made the quilt top in sections.  When I got the first section done, I thought, "This will never work for my living room wall."  My friend, who comes over to yack sew every Friday afternoon, advised me to put it on my wall for at least one month before I decided whether or not to keep her.  I didn't have to wait that long to decide; I knew by the time I had sewn the whole top together that she was a keeper!

Mrs.Star is a symbol to me that it is perfectly okay for me to be different than those around me.  She is a very unusual quilt to have in a living room, and that is what I LOVE about her!  She is unique, she displays her beauty with courage, and she brightens the room with cheer, never ashamed that she is different, yet she is also perfectly content to hang in the background!  I want to be more like her!

Through quilting Mrs.Star on my vintage 1896 Singer 31-15 long-arm quilting machine, I learned that floating the quilt top was the culprit that caused my last two quilts to shrink so drastically, like 6 to 7" on a twin-sized quilt!  The tension on the quilt top is needed to prevent the extra shrinkage, so I now gladly pin the top to a roller to prevent this.  If a quilt starts out as a full size and shrinks to a twin, it does not meet the purpose for which it was intended, and we can't have that, can we?  Mrs.Star was 85" square before quilting and washing and only shrank 3" down to 82" square, perfectly within normal limits.  

Quilt Stats:

• Name:  Mrs.Star
• Pattern:  Sparkle Plenty by Loft Creations, purchased from Connecting Threads, enlarged from 48".
• Fabric:  Black with tiny white polka dots from Connecting Threads.  All other fabrics are Annie's Farm Stand by Holly Holderman for Lakehouse Fabrics, purchased from Marie Madeline Studio and various Etsy shops.
• Size:  82" x 82" after washing.
• Backing:  Black with tiny white polka dots from Connecting Threads with a strip of half-square triangles down the center.
• Binding:  Black with tiny white polka dots from Connecting Threads, double thickness for durability, attached by machine with mitered 45-degree corners.  
• Batting: Warm and Natural 80/20 cotton/poly.
• Quilting:  All-over meandering stitch in black polyester thread on my 1896 Singer 31-15 industrial machine set up on a quilting frame.
• Value:  Cheery!

P.S. The quilt rack shown above was custom-built in the USA by veterans at GWiz Wood Products.  It measures 85" long.  I have no connection with them; just wanted to share where I got my really awesome quilt rack.  It was the first thing I bought when we built our new house!

P.S.S. You can read more about Mrs.Singer, my 1896 quilting machine, HERE.