Friday 14 February 2014

:: giant vintage star quilt ::

i have been having a rather lovely vintage kind of week...
the very very lovely and talented Cathi sent me a big pile of her vintage fabric scraps...one girl's trash n all that...and i have been having copious amounts of fun with them.






i had a design brief for a magazine project (you know the one) that i thought my precious vintage fabrics would be just perfect for...you will see more of that in a couple of months and i am so pleased with how these pretty fabrics joined together to make heart-warming comforting items.

the big play though, in more ways than one, was the vintage giant star quilt i made...


my goodness i absolutely love this quilt.
i think it may even be my most favouritest quilt i have ever made.

it is based upon jeni b's gorgeous quilt and can obviously be made in a multitude of fab fabrics but seeing jeni's beautiful vintage one i knew it was perfect for my pile of vintage fabrics.


and even though it is a super large quilt (almost 80" square) being just 28 pieces sewn together it is obviously extremely quick to make the quilt top.

quilt top made, backing bought (a fresh orange gingham) i ventured on quilting this giant.
it took a while to baste but that gave me time to decide how i was going to quilt it.

now i am by no means an experienced quilter. i am quite a dab hand at simple straight line quilting, which i absolutely love, but this quilt needed a softer quilting to compliment the bold star. i was quite nervous about venturing with some curly loopy fmq...i could quite easily ruin the whole thing.

thankfully i didn't and thankfully it turned out even more magical than i could imagine.
to finish off i bound it with a scrappy binding made up of some of the leftover vintage fabric pieces which turned out subtle enough but with a little bit of quirky character.

my only sadness about this whole thing is hubs, whilst he wowed at it, said it was no way going near our bed...way too flowery.
i may just have to sneak it on one night while he is away...and just leave it there.

big thanks go to my lovely tall friend helen for modelling the quilt for me...she came round this morning for a run...little did she know. 



11 comments:

Mrs Flying Blind... said...

Loving the vintage star xxx

Catherine said...

It looks fabulous.....and what do men know anyway :-)

Rachel said...

I love this quilt! Beautiful fabrics and perfect quilting! The fact that it was made from Cathi's scraps makes it even better!

Unknown said...

It's beautiful. Well done you for braving a different quilting technique.
Wishing you a lovely weekend. x
PS - I've just been and purchased some Sarah Jane Studio fabrics to make Violet a quilt for her 6th birthday. Can't wait for it to arrive - her new collection is stunning. eekkk!! my second quilt!!

Archie The Wonder Dog said...

I love that star!

lindsey said...

You already know I love this quilt but it's been good to see more photos of it. I tried fmq once and did a little workshop but found it quite hard. Maybe I just need to practice.
This is a great Spring time quilt and so just get it on that bed and brighten up is dreary weather :)

Leigh said...

Hi Karen. Loving the vintage fabrics! Was just wondering... Did you quilt it on a normal domestic machine? I've only quilted one large quilt myself at home and found it quite challenging to say the least! ;-)

Quiltjane said...

I can see you why it is your favourite. Just beautiful.

Unknown said...

This quilt is unbearably lovely - I have never made a quilt but now I am dreaming of making something as lovely as your vintage star quilt. Gorgeous.

http://asaucystitch.blogspot.co.uk/

Kay said...

I really love this design. Congrats on your quilting too!! I have only ever done straight line quilting and worry too much for anything else.

dropstitch said...

Ooh, I think this could be my ideal first quilt! Looks lovely. Get it on that bed, I say :)