The final four stars in A Pound of Stars

Here are the final four stars in A Pound of Stars!

Although this star is scrappy, especially the middle round, the blues are much closer in value so that the block looks less "wild".

The yellow points in the following block reference this same yellow that was used in the centre of a star that I showed you yesterday. I repeated the yellow fabric so that didn't stand out as much as it would have were it only used in the one block. It is such a bright yellow that if it was used only once it would have looked out of place.

The last star is one of my favourites for one reason....the turquoise patch. Aside from that one patch this block also looks a little less scrappy but if you look closely you will notice that several fabrics were used in the middle round. In case you are wondering about the turquoise patch. I call it my "thinking patch". I figured people would look at the quilt and wonder if the patch was a mistake or if it was intentional - it was intentional!

This quilt was entirely hand quilted without any markings because I had no idea how one would go about marking a quilt. I started by echo quilting each individual diamond. Then I had the large white spaces to fill so I started out by echo quilting and then just kept quilting is a square spiral until I got to the centre. My computer and camera are giving me grief today so I don't have pictures to show but will try to sort out my problems and post some for you in a future post.

I do have pictures of how I finished the edge of the quilt. I had no idea how to bind a quilt with a curved edge (I barely knew how to bind a straight edge). The solution? I quilted the quilt and then trimmed the batting so that it was 1/4" or so shorter than the ice cream cone patch. Since the ice cream cones were English paper pieced there was a nice crease on the curved edge. I simply folded the patch over the batting and pinned through to the backing along the curved edge. Finally I trimmed the backing fabric so that it was 1/4 to 3/8" beyond the finished edge of the quilt top. I turned the backing under and re-pinned the edge so I could used a whip stitch to close the edge.

It sounds like it was time consuming but in fact it was fairly quick and certainly much easier that applying a bias binding to the curved edge. And I really liked the finish much better than a curved binding. I have since done a curved binding on the ice cream code edge of my Dear Jane quilt but that was many years after I made A Pound of Stars. You live and learn! Oh, and in case you didn't already guess this I used white polyester thread to piece the whole quilt! I suspect that some of the fabrics in the quilt are poly cotton. This quilt has survived many, many years of rough use. The seams and fabrics are all intact and I think it looks pretty good! I hope this story has inspired you to get creative and not to fear breaking rules or making mistakes.

A Pound of Stars, early 1980s

I bound Lazy Punk and used the same fabric as the backing. I love the stripes and the taupe tones so I made bias binding and applied it to the quilt. I am very happy with this finish! Time permitting it goes in the washing machine and dryer today!

 

Until I post again, happy sewing!