Queen-Sized Star Light Star Bright Quilt-a-Long - Finished!

Meet Mrs. Star Light Star Bright. Finished before the quilt-a-long ended {with hours to spare}! I am so tickled with how she turned out! The picture below is on the floor. I chose to not put solid sashing between the blocks, and this completely changes the pattern by creating sub-patterns as shown in the middle of the picture below.  That design would not have been there with sashing between the blocks. The picture below shows one block.  The blocks are hard to pick out, so I thought I'd point one out to you.  They measure 28" square, and there are 9 blocks total. The border and binding are solid gray for simplicity on an already busy quilt. Spot On extra wide backing by Robert Kaufman complements the front perfectly with a touch of whimsy.  I used Spot On extra wide backing in red on my son's rainbow quilt, but it was stiff and didn't get a whole lot softer in the wash, but for some reason, the gray is much softer than the red, even though it is from the same line.
I am in ♥ with extra-wide backing since learning to tear the raw edges to square up the fabric.  Before I learned this trick, I could not get the extra wide fabric to go onto the rollers square, and it was very frustrating.  Most extra wide fabrics are put onto the bolts so crookedly that squaring them up by tearing the edges can result in losing up to 1/2 yard overall!  Fat Quarter Shop automatically gives 1/4 yard extra when ordering extra wide backing for this very reason; they know you'll need more to square it up.  
This backing also did not shrink as much as regular yardage does; the whole quilt shrank 2" each direction, and quilts with yardage backing shrink up to 6" which is so disappointing!  When comparing the front of this quilt to the backing, the front has more antique wrinkling from being washed than the backing does, which seems to mean it shrank more than the backing ... and the backing helped keep it's size ... ???  At least that's my theory on why this quilt shrank so little.
This is the first time I have used Aurifil cotton thread, and, well, let's just say, Mrs.Singer did not like the extra fuzz she created.  It caused a LOT of bellyache as I had to pull out a large number of stitches before I had the fuzz problem figured out.  I had to blow out the machine an incredible amount which I rarely do with polyester thread.  Just sayin'.  I probably won't use it again.   Quilt Stats:

• Pattern:  Star Light Star Bright, a quilt-along from Happy Quilting Melissa
• Size:  Generous queen, 96" x 96"
• Fabric:  Sapphire by Exclusively Quilters, Kona Cotton Steel
• Batting:  Hobbs Natural Cotton
• Backing:  Spot On by Robert Kaufman, extra-wide backing
• Quilting:  Allover meandering stitch in gray Aurifil cotton thread on Mrs.Singer, my antique 31-15 mounted on a long-arm quilting frame.
• Binding:  Double layer in Kona Cotton Steel, attached by machine
• Value:  Sparkling cheerfulness!

This quilt is for sale in my Etsy shop, BusyHandsQuilts!!

Linking to:
Crazy Mom Quilts

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