Day 283 – Starry Sky
Seashells and Waves was a big hit! Let’s try a similar design, this time with stars!
It’s a beautiful WARM day today and I’m still putting the little Janome HD 1000 through its paces. I think I’ll stitch myself a fun halter top to enjoy this warm weather in and see how that machine is at general sewing, setting zippers, and stitching hems.
This machine review program is definitely giving me an excuse to pull out the patterns and fabric I’ve been hording and put them to good use!
On the quilting front, I’ve just finished an old baby quilt top I’ve had laying around for years. Since the fabrics were so busy and complex, I quilted it simply with a large scale Seashells & Waves in all over quilting style.
Binding this fun quilt will make for another good video later this week. My quilt binding videos (see part 1 here and part 2 here) are some of my oldest videos and I think they’re need of an update.
Speaking of videos, let’s get back to Starry Sky:
Difficulty Level – Intermediate. This design looks a lot harder than it actually is! First you start with a flowing line and occasionally branch off with a star shape. Fill your whole quilting space loosely with this foundation, then simply travel stitch and echo until your quilt is entirely filled.
Design Family – Foundational. These designs are some of my absolute favorites! They’re very different from other free motion quilting designs, but the basic rule is easy to understand and memorize: start with a foundation then fill from there.
Directional Texture – All Directions. Swirling stars and flowing lines combine to create a knock out texture! Definitely give yourself enough space to flow around with this design. Squishing it in small spaces would not only be difficult, it would ruin the pretty texture.
Suggestions for Use – I keep thinking about making James a solar system quilt. Maybe I should stop thinking about it and actually sit down and quilt it with Starry Sky in the sashing and borders.
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
Ooo I like this!
I really enjoy your instructions. Thank you for sharing your imagination! The videos won't load all the way and I so want to learn to travel from one spot to another in the free motion, fill-in process. Watching you is much more productive than looking in a book, though I want to order your book as well. I have been quilting and teaching quilting techniques for a LONG time but I have stalled in my progress of getting any further in my meager machine quilting skills. Once again, thanks so much for sharing! Will there be a DVD available of these patterns someday, maybe? 😀
I like watching you quilt these ideas! I just wish the videos would load completely. Is there a way to buy them all? I will probably order a book, but to watch how you travel will be what would help me improve my machine quilting and get my own imagination going. Thank you so much for sharing!
Hi Carol – I do have a book and DVD combo out right now. This DVD features 30 beginner level designs:
http://www.daystyledesigns.com/beginnercombokit.htm
As for the videos, click Play, then Pause, then wait for the little red bar to fill completely, then click play again and the videos should play all the way through.
Cheers,
Leah