Night Sky Mini Quilt

A few months ago, I signed up to participate in an Australian handmade birthday swap, where we make a small gift each month for the birthday girl. It is a wonderful idea - I can't think of a better birthday present than getting eleven packages of handmade goodness. Plus it is a lot of fun working on small projects, something I don't tend to do unless it is for a swap or a quick gift.

For our September birthday girl, I decided to make a mini quilt, using Jaybird Quilt's fabulous Night Sky pattern. These blocks come together really quickly, and it is such a cool block I will definitely be making a whole quilt of these on day. I used a couple of prints from Anna Maria Horner's Pretty Potent collection for the inner star, and some Cotton and Steel basics for the outer points. The background is a couple of white on white prints.

When it came to quilting this one, I actually had a few hiccups. My original quilting plan (and the one I started off trying) just didn't work. At. All. I very rarely rip out FMQ, but in this case it was obvious from fairly early on that it was going to look awful so I unpicked it and started over. I'd basically extended the edges of the star points out into the negative space - and it looked terrible. I'm much happier with the medallion-style quilting I went with - it suits this block so much better. 

 I did mark the main straight lines echoing the central hexagon shape, and marked the centre point of the second 'border'. That was my second hiccup - I'd been using my frixion marker to mark the lines and put it down to do something else. When I went back to finish the marking, I accidentally picked up a normal black pen and drew a line before I'd realised. After a minor tantrum, I decided to see if I could quilt over it to hide it (as it was only a very fine line) - and it worked pretty well. That's why there is a straight line through the pebbles at the top left of the top photo ;o). The centre feathery quilting was inspired by how Angela Walters quilted Julie's original Night Sky quilt, but then I just made it up as I went along.

I used two layers of cotton/wool batting for this one, which is why it's so puffy. The quilting is Aurifil 40wt in soft white, which melts into the background beautifully, and just leaves all the texture. I have to admit it was a little sad saying goodbye to this one, but I'm glad it's going to a good (handmade loving) home :o)

xx Jess