Thursday, March 15, 2012

sneak peek :: dark night wonky stars


since i made these wonky stars about a week ago, the technique and the idea of a dark night sky filled with little (wonky) twinklers have been dominating my quilting brain lately. i started with eight yards of cotton solids, mostly white or charcoal with an ashy grey in between. i dyed the white using basic rit powder dye in shades of blue, purple, and teal and orange, yellow, and grey. from there, tiny stars are being made with my custom yellow and galaxy blue, plus the addition of a few sky and star prints from my stash.


i did a little internet research after deciding that this would be a massive quilt - one that could live on our bed forever and more than adequately cover a family of four. i know that no matter how hard i try i would never be able to fit a king size quilt in my tiny singer. it just can't happen. my first thought was to send a finished top, batting, and back sandwich to a professional long arm quilter. oh how beautiful it could be - just think of the possibilities!

but i know my budget would never cover something like that, at least not now. so back to the drawing board. i quickly found a few tutorials and ideas for 'quilt as you go'. and so an experiment has begun: with an ever-changing collection of wonky stars and improv strips, i will be making various quilted blocks that will eventually come together for a finished king size quilt.

with one 20" x 20" quilted wonky star block done, i feel like i could be venturing into a collection of mini quilts. and i am very excited.

8 comments:

  1. I love this! I just made a very similar mini, and I am with you! The shades are fabulous, and the stars are just so fun to make. I think doing this quilt-as-you-go is a great solution to make a giant, lovely quilt!

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  2. Oh, good.... more stars! Glad you found QAYG. Definitely a nice way to keep things in house =)

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  3. Love stars and the wonkiness of this quilt is wonderful! The colors are great too ~ really loving grey as a background.

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  4. you should be excited, this is awesome!!

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  5. Just beautiful. I saw this on Pinterest, then Jeni's blog (In Color Order) and had to come through Flickr to take a look! I would love it if you shared how to do the quilt as you go method- I can't imagine a large quilt getting through my SInger's small space either and feel so limited not being able to quilt larger quilts!

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    1. thank you angie! i will be roughly following the qayg method that i found through sew take a hike: http://sewtakeahike.typepad.com/sewtakeahike/2010/03/quilt-as-you-go-quiltalong-part-one.html

      i hope to keep this little space up to date with my progress so make sure to check back in! glad you found me.

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  6. Thanks Hannah! I am glad I found you too! I want to experiment now a bit with quilting along- you are inspiring me!

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  7. Beautiful, I'm so inspired by your use of your own hand dyed fabrics - I'm a big fan of hand-dyed but have always purchased mine.

    I have quilted a king-sized quilt on my domestic machine. It's hard work, but you can do it ... check out Leah Day's freemotion quilting project blog, she has some good info.

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