lone star quilts for twins

When you have twin grandbabies born in the "lone star state", you just gotta make them a "lone star" baby quilt, right?

I used this tutorial for the quilt top.

The girl quilt is made from the fabric line "Wonderland" by Rifle paper company, still available on etsy sites.

The boy quilt fabric is from my stash.  It has an organic spiral in the star,  then continues to the edges with organic straight lines, giving it a more masculine look. 

With all the crazy, confetti free motion quilting I've seen lately,  I wanted to do something different with "her" quilt.  I took a class on Craftsy from Christine Cameli on "wild quilting".  

 I wanted the outer edges to have open spirals, then randomly graduate to closed spirals before I got to the star.  Drawing a line on the fabric with a disappearing pen before I started, helped me to know where to stop the opened spirals and start the closed spirals.  I'm learning the hard way that marking up your quilt top with your quilting ideas helps you remember them since once you start quilting, you are so focused on what is right in front of you and not the whole design.

I love how the grunge pink on the back ground really helps your quilting stand out.  I think that's my new "go to" backing fabric when I put more effort into the quilting of a quilt.

I wanted the star to be well defined, so I quilted a double line around it's edge.

I have noticed that some of my quilts that are past 5 years old, have lost their fluffiness and are flat, as in it's hard to tell if they even have batting in them.  I have discovered that if I wash them, and put them in dryer for 8-10 min on medium, that the fluff comes back.  

But I also want to test these 2 quilts, as they will probably be used about the same amount.  On the girl quilt, I used 2 layers of batting, compared to the boy quilt which only has 1 layer.  I will be interested to see in time what the difference is.

The girl quilt ended up measuring smaller in the end because the quilting was more dense.

 

linked:

finish it up Friday

whoop whoop

save your selvages

Has anybody else been saving their selvages?  

see tutorial at end of post

I don't know where this picture came from.  Possibly QuiltCon.

Riel of The Q and the U even has a book out on Amazon titled "Modern Selvage Quilting"

Carolinasquirrell has some great selvage quilts in her etsy shop, including this one called Vintage Spools.

At quilt market last year, I stood in line next to a group of ladies who had these cute pouches hanging around their necks.

They had a plastic sleeve for their exhibitor pass.

 A front pocket for a pen and cards.

Then, the middle opening for wallet, phone etc.   It was so convenient, and every year I say that I'm going to make one.  Cuz, you know . . . you've got to do something with all those selvages you've been collecting.

Melinda on Selvage Blog has some fun ideas including this one:

A Funky Chicken pincushion is definitely on my sewing bucket list:



"baskets for moo" has done a great job with a tutorial here.

Don't forget the "fancy fur" for "comb attitude".