Pop Stars

The little (55" x 59") Pop Stars quilt is quilted and bound.  The pattern for the blocks came from a video tutorial by Jenny Doan of the Missouri Star Quilt Company, and I used it for a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project from the fall of last year until now.

I used mostly scraps from the various colors chosen for the RSC each month, although at the end I used scraps from my box marked "Wild Patterns."  It included fabrics with more than one color and some novelty prints.  The gray backgrounds were mostly scraps, too, left over from the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt last fall.  I did buy the darker gray border fabric.

The various border blocks were made from triangles cut off when making the stars.  It was quite an easy block to make, measuring a weird 8.5" finished, but by the time each month rolled around, I had completely forgotten how to make the block.  Two of the yellow blocks were made too big (9" finished), so I cut them down to fit into this quilt.  I do like the way each star floats on its own background.

I tried something new in quilting this quilt, wavy lines, fairly close together, all along the length of the quilt.  I decided to give it a try after an online lecture by Judi Kirk, a British quilter, through the Vermont Quilt Festival.  She spoke with a bed-sized quilt as a backdrop, and that quilt had the same type of quilting.  She uses that type of quilting because she says it does not distract from the quilt's piecing.  

It was easy but somewhat tedious, yet I liked the way it looked in the end.  When you start, you make the vertical lines 2-3" apart, and that doesn't look too good at all.  After doing those lines far apart all the way across (I started in the center), you fill in the spaces at random intervals.  It is the randomness that really helps the quilting blend in.

I also used Kirk's suggested polyester thread with a ballpoint needle, although I think cotton thread would work just as well.  The poly is finer and does shimmer a little, which is a nice effect.  I will definitely use this technique again, although I'd like to try a few other techniques first.