More of the Glorious Butterfly Garden Quilt...

Do you see the star spinning into orbit?

Quilting the radiating swirls from the middle of the star was well worth the effort. I knew that whatever design I ended up stitching on the star of this quilt had to be elegant and lively. In order to maintain the clean lines that the seams made, I stitched along each row of diamonds. After debating between doing swirls that stayed in the channels or randomly "climbed" all over the star, I decided channel quilting would best compliment the clean, modern, bold look of this quilt. This of course took A LOT of stopping and starting. Like....A WHOLE LOT. Halfway through I was tempted to think: "What on earth have I gotten myself into??!" Those thoughts were soon replaced by my growing excitement. The more channels I filled with swirls, the more the star began to come to life. I was motivated by the thought of how stunning the quilt was beginning to look. When the last swirl had been sewn it looked as though the star was spinning into orbit.

Ilene did a very nice piecing job on this quilt. Often it is difficult, as you quilters know, to keep ALL the diamonds flat and not stretched out of shape. Ilene's quilt was nice and smooth. I enjoyed working on it. One tip I realized (I'm sure some of you have already figured this out) is that batiks are a great option when making a quilt with lots of bias. Yes, batik or not, the fabric will always tend to be stretchy when cut on the bias, but because batik is stiff and more densely woven, it probably has less stretching potential. Ilene's quilt was all batiks; and as I said, behaved beautifully.

I worked long and hard on sketching z butterfly. I finally came up with this one. She turned out pretty whimsical and fun.