Modern, again...

Wow, did I fill pages of doodles before coming up with a plan for this piece! I even started quilting one plan, only to rip out the stitches when I realized “Well, that doesn't look good!”

This plan came about when I realized I could not stitch in the ditch around the aqua squares, because some seams were pressed to the aqua, some to the white. It just wouldn't look right. So, I thought I would quilt a star into each aqua square, and then carry them into the white space, kind of like ghost stars. It definitely helped that the piecing increments were easy...2 inch, then 3 inch and 4 inch star spaces. This meant I could stitch the echo lines using a ruler and minimal pre-marking.

I explained to the customer that I would not quilt on the circles and petal shapes until the background fill was finished. We used two layers of batting – wool over a cotton/poly blend – and I hoped that would be enough. In the end, we decided to quilt a petal shape into the large center circle, as it was 4 ½ inches across. The smaller shapes had enough fill from the wool batting to hold up on their own.

I'm crazy for the texture this piece has, from the ½ inch echo lines and the double batting!

Nothing great was ever

achieved without enthusiasm.

Emerson