Lonestar

This is a quilt that I've made before in red, white and blue. I'll see if I can find a photo to show you another day. The basic Lonestar block pattern came from a McCall's Best Quilts magazine (Vol. 3, 1988).

 I had a pack of orange and gray fabrics that I curated (LOVE that word!) from the odds and ends in my fabric collection.  I pieced the star - it seemed to be a bit more difficult than I remembered to get the centre portion to lay flat and not bubble. Those bias seams on diamonds are tricky.

.I added a plain narrow light gray border to square up the centre block and then a wider darker gray border to make the measurements work for the outer checkerboard border.

 I then challenged myself to do some custom quilting on each element of the quilt. So the checkerboard border got an orange peel treatment.

The dark gray border was quilted with swirls. The light gray area, including the border, was free-motion quilted with a meandering pattern. And lastly, the diamonds were quilted a quarter inch in from the seam lines to emphasize the diamond shapes.

 All in all I was pretty happy with this little quilt. The textures looks great and I'm slowly getting better at figuring out different things to quilt in different areas.

 It does take at least double the time to quilt a project with various techniques as opposed to a general all-over design that doesn't take into account the different elements of the piecing.

 Quilt was finished with a gray print that I had in my stash and machine bound with a solid gray fabric.

A quilt with these details doesn't stay in the shop very long and I'm glad I took lots of photos while it was still here. It may be one I do again in a different colourway. (I'm pinning lots of colour inspiration on Pinterest!)

--Ann