98% Done....

Well, it is quilted, blocked (no more wonkiness :-)) and bound! My experiment has just three more steps: some crystals in the star centers, a label and maybe some crystals outlinging the center star (which is barely visible in the photos). Unfortunately, I really didn't want this piece to be a square. I thought Octagon or Hexagon... but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't to so without cutting off a ribbon and I wasn't about to do that. So here it is....


The ribbon effect moving around the top was fun to do. I learned not to use tear away stabilizer in these as it is now a permanent part of the quilt. Good thing it is Ricky Tims stabilizer, as it is soft and scrunchy.. you don't feel it inside of the quilt. Next time I will use a hoop and not worry about a stabilizer. I do like the highlighting done on the edge. The pink segment has two shades of pink. The green segments are highlighted in white as I couldn't get a light enough green to show enough of a difference.


I like the purple waves in the center square. I used the width of my open toe embroidery foot to help keep an even distance, but I learned that when free motion quilting on the 830, speed control is key! It was very easy to control the movement at the right speed, since you had plenty of room for the quilt and didn't have to stop and re-adjust constantly. Gotta love that large quilting area :-).


The swirly-ques were easy as I do these all the time, but you will notice I added starburst inside the stars since the last post. When the top was all quilted, I decided they 1) really needed something and 2) they were a little puffy, so they needed something to hold them down.


I liked the fact that I changed the quilting motif with every round of the square in a square. These loops are soo easy to do and provide a great motif for when you need to quilt around other design elements. I used a mix of Madiera, Isacord and Superior threads on this piece. All worked equally well, although I definitely needed to lower the tension setting on the 830.

Now... feathers... sorry the photos aren't very clear....


And here are my freeform feathers. Yes! I think I am finally starting to get in the groove with these. Although they are pretty basic, I was able to turn and twist them to fill in the space as needed. I really felt good making these.


I do think I will practice other type of feathers, but for now am ok with my progress. Oh another thing... if I made this a hexagon or an octagon I would have lost all of these... hmmpphhh... maybe there was a reason why those shapes didn't work.

So now, to add some pizzazz in those stars. Oh, by the way... I have named my experiment. Celestial Enlightenment. This practice piece taught me alot. As I said in an earlier post, funny how when you let yourself just go, what you can come up with :-).