Sparkling Stars Quilt

My mom is fantastic. She loves everything I make. I don’t think it actually matters how it turns out, she’ll think its beautiful and amazing. Since she appreciates things I make more than just about anyone else, I figure it was about time I made her a quilt!

She loves the color blue, so I decided to put all my favorite blue fabrics into one quilt for her. This quilt has (16) 12″ stars around the outside, each of which has two different fabrics.

There are also (2) bigger 24″ stars in the center. The spokes of these stars are each made with (8) smaller triangles of similar shades.

I used Michael Miller’s stitch square in sea for the background – I love the low volumeness and how it reads as white, but has a bit of blue. I’m hoping that it won’t look dirty quite as easily as a solid white background would.

I was also excited to get to use bits of things my sister and I love, like penguins, stars, and elephants.

This was really my first attempt at free motion quilting on a big scale, other than my sister’s jewel star quilt – which was technically free motion quilting, but really just straight lines. I did feathers and squiggles in the smaller stars, and then giant feathers in the big stars. They’re not anywhere close to perfect, but I’m really happy with how they turned out. And of course, my mom is impressed.

My mom’s one request was that it have a soft, cuddly back, so I used minky. The quilting doesn’t show up super well in person, but it adds a neat texture to the minky where it tacked some of it down.

Quilt Specs:
Pattern: self-designed. I’m calling it ‘sparkling stars’ because I like to think the mixed fabrics in the center stars look a bit sparkly!
Size: 50″ x 75″
Fabric: lots of quilting cottons on the front, Stitch in Sea background, and minky on the back.
Made for: my mom!