Stars for Edie

My husband has a wonderful Great Aunt. I love her and in the few years I've known her, she has taught me so much. She is so happy and grateful for everything, and is never without her sense of humor. She is really someone I hope to be like, and I try to work towards it daily. Over thanksgiving we were visiting her, as we do whenever we have a chance while in the area, and I got it into my head that I should make her a quilt. It didn't take me long to start pondering my Ruby charm pack and what I could do with it. Naturally I couldn't get it out of my head until I made it....

What I came up with was a quilt of wonky stars. I had been wanting to try some and this seemed perfect. I used this tutorial which I had been saving. {I have discovered I love making wonky stars!} The charm pack was perfect and gave a nice scrappy look but still so pulled together. I didn't want an entirely white background though, so with one charm pack I made the white background stars and with another I did a scrappy background with a white star. The colors worked out perfectly and I am glad I sorted them instead of just doing random and mixing the colors. Using the 5" squares, each block finished at a nice 13.5". To make it a bit bigger, I put on two borders so it rounds out at 45"x59" which I think should make a nice lap size quilt for her.  The smaller border is one of my favorite red polka dot fabrics and the outer border is a houndstooth in a grayish color that frames it so well. 

I love it, I just absolutely love the outcome. It's such a classy quilt :) To make it better, it is backed with a great quilters flannel from Joanns. {side note: I have discovered I love these flannels; both that I have purchased washed up so beautifully, very little shrinkage and so super soft.} It is so snuggly. To keep it light, I did some free motion quilting, but I decided to try some loopys going up the columns. They are far from perfect, but it was fun and it came out really nice. It was softer than straight line quilting and has such a nice drape.You can kind of see it in this picture, but it was quite hard to photograph, especially after it was washed and got that perfect crinkle.

This might be one of my favorite quilts I've made. I love the fabric line, the stars, the borders, the flannel, everything. I hope she likes it too and I can't wait to give it to her :)

And now, I'm off to take a nice long drive. Lots of holiday fun to be had over the next 9 days. I hope. But I'll be popping in to show some of the other sweet things I've made recently on my mad dash to leaving time and I have a few other things planned. Happy weekend everyone!