Journal Notes

I saw a quilt of this pattern on Pinterest and managed to draft my own pattern on eq8. I am finally getting to understand the program better and it is really fun to use now. In choosing fabrics for this I set the following rules for myself: No obvious florals No pink No purple No solids, hand dyes, or batiks No highly saturated colors I was a little loose on the contrast between dark and light. My goal was a busy quilt, but not without some thought. The center of each star has 2 mediums and two darks in the same positions throughout. I really love how these fabric choices look together. I think this will be very interesting for a baby to look at. What I learned from this project: 1: If I move my painters tape ledge seam guide, I need to test my quarter inch! I made a new ledge before starting this top and assumed I had put it back on the right spot but I was just ever so slightly off and it totally threw off my seam allowance. Unfortunately I was too bullheaded to test it till I had only 3 blocks left to go. 2: a tiny plaid makes a great binding. 3: I love a piano key border made with varying width strips of the same color! Just make sure you distribute the varying widths and shades somewhat evenly. 4: when using a curved ruler, the curve will be deeper when the length of it is longer, as shown in the center of the stars. I could have used a smaller arc ruler on the horizontal and vertical seams to get the “petal” shapes the same thickness as in the diagonal petals. 5: if you’re doing micro stippling on a light background and your backing has a white background, you should use white thread in the bobbin. This would have looked much better on the back if I’d used white in the bobbin.