First Light Designs

Ladies and gentlemen, we have another Reach for the Stars quilt finish! Jennifer Varney of Hudson, New Hampshire is one of several quilters across the country I met virtually last year as we each worked on our own version of a star sampler quilt designed by Terri Krysan and featured as a series project in Quilter’s Newsletter. Over the course of 2014 our little band of stargazers shared pictures, compared notes, and cheered each other on.

We all made changes — some great, some small — to the design. Jenn chose to make a smaller quilt with fewer blocks and to use a straight set rather than putting her blocks on point. Here is her finished quilt:

The muted browns and blues are offset by shots of metallic gold, giving the quilt such a rich look. The center medallion shows this off especially well:

Lorri Wurtzler of Seventh Heaven Quilting in Nashua, New Hampshire did the longarm quilting. I hope you can see Lorri’s lovely quilting in this close-up . . .

. . . and this one:

By changing the setting, Jennifer reduced the number of blocks (not counting the center medallion) from 16 to 12. If my math is correct, her quilt measures about 60″ square, perfect for a lap quilt or throw. And wouldn’t it look terrific on a wall?

I’m excited to show you a full frontal shot of Catch a Falling Star (CAFS), my sampler quilt based on Terri Krysan’s Reach for the Stars quilt. CAFS was photographed last week by Bill Volckening, quiltmaker, collector, author, historian, and blogger, to name a few of his pursuits. I have no wall or floor space in my home large enough to capture the entire quilt, which measures 84″ x 105″ after quilting, in a photo. Fortunately, there was plenty of room in Bill’s studio.

Here is Catch a Falling Star from the front: and from the back:

In a future post I’ll take you on a little tour of Catch a Falling Star, block by block. I’ll show you some close-ups of Loretta Orsborn’s lovely quilting and share a couple of fun facts about the making of the quilt.

Would you like to see more pictures of Catch a Falling Star, my series sampler quilt based on Terri Krysan’s Reach for the Stars? Ah, I thought so.

Let’s start with a shot of the entire quilt (you’ll see close-ups of longarm quilter Loretta Orsborn’s beautiful work in subsequent photos):

You’re looking at it from the side because I couldn’t squeeze myself into the room in order to take a proper shot looking at the quilt from top to bottom.

Here’s the center medallion . . .

. . . with a close-up of the free-motion feathers quilted in the black star points:

The 10 blocks sashed in black and the center of the medallion have one digitized motif and the four blocks sashed in green have a different one. Here is Block 2, sashed in black. . .

. . . and Block 10 sashed in green:

All of the quilting in the sashing strips is free-motion.

This is one of the side setting triangles:

Notice the design quilted in the hourglass blocks (there are four in the center medallion and one in each of the side setting triangles):

Loretta used the same motif in the border squares:

She free-motion quilted feathers all around the outer border:

The straight lines in part of the border give the eye some visual relief from all the quilted curves. Those straight lines are used in the interior of the quilt as well, tying the quilting elements together. You’ll see what I mean when you take another look at a side setting triangle:

And isn’t that vine motif graceful? Here it is in one inner corner:

Finally, here is a portion of the back of the quilt, where the black fabric allows you to see lots of quilting detail. You can also see the two focus fabrics I used for the fussy-cut images in each of the blocks on the front:

Once Catch a Falling Star is bound, I’ll take proper full-length photos of both sides. The binding is attached, by the way, and I’m now gearing up to stitch it down by hand . . . all 378″ of it.

The New Year has gotten off to a grand start. Yesterday I picked up Catch a Falling Star — my version of Terri Krysan’s Reach for the Stars sampler quilt — from longarm quilter Loretta Orsborn of Orsborn Specialty Quilting, and I have been swooning with delight ever since. I’ve long admired Loretta’s quilting skills, having seen several examples of her work in quilt shows over the last few years, and was overjoyed when she agreed to work her magic on my quilt. She is equally skilled at digitized and free-motion quilting, and I was eager to have both on display.

On the day I took my quilt top and backing to Loretta’s studio, we spent at least two hours looking at quilting motifs, discussing options, and choosing threads. We made a lot of decisions but I gave Loretta carte blanche to make changes and asked her to incorporate as much free motion quilting as she desired.

Take a look at her lovely work:

More pictures to come, I promise. These are the photos Loretta sent me when she finished the quilting. The battery on my brand new digital camera is charging as I write this. As soon as the camera is ready to use, I’ll take lots of photos and get them posted. In the meantime, I’m going to start working on the binding.