Friday, August 13, 2021

Filigree Stars Quilt


This quilt is the result of curiosity and playfulness. It is another quilt combining hand stitched English Paper Piecing (EPP), appliqué and machine stitching. Each star is made from only two shapes, 2" point diamonds and 2" five point diamonds, the same shapes Jodi used in her Rosemary Quilt from The Seedling Quilts book. 

For the star centres I fussy cut pieces from two different patterned cotton poplin fabrics. With 10 points meeting in each centre, a lightweight fabric worked much better than regular weight quilting fabric. These stars came together quickly and I greatly enjoyed the process.





I machine sewed low volume four-patch backgrounds for each star. After hand appliquéing each 'filigree' star, I cut away the centre of the background block to allow each finished block to sit more evenly. Then it was time to quickly machine sew the completed blocks together.

The four internal intersections of the completed blocks are covered with hand pieced and appliquéd 4 point stars (long sides 3.5"). The quilt seemed too bare without something in these large open areas. I will admit it was quite tricky to fold and appliqué those four star points neatly!

A colourful, narrow, pieced border was added followed by a wider pieced border of low volume prints. I really like the finish this gave the quilt.

The hand quilting was another opportunity to explore new ideas with some embroidery style stitching. This effectively secured the quilt while adding a little embellishment too. I outline quilted each large and small star, then ghost quilted the partial four point stars around the edges of the quilt.






The autumn tones of this quilt deserved a thicker wadding/batting for added warmth. For now it's another wonderful household addition, very useful in the cooler days. The generous sized stars add lovely visual warmth too.


Quilt Details
Filigree Stars Quilt
my own design
61"/155cm square
Started early March 2021
Finished late May 2021
Legacy Natural Wadding with scrim

2 comments:

Kay said...

I liked this so much that I have just gone online and bought a copy of the book. I love EPP.x

Karen @ Pieces of Contentment said...

The Seedling Quilts book is filled with lovely designs, very inspiring. This particular quilt isn't in it - as this is my own design, however I used the shapes as mentioned above. I have made the Cornflower Quilt (shared on my blog late last year) from this book and was inspired by the Rosemary quilt to create this design. The 4 pt star shape is the same as the template in the book for the Myrtle Quilt. Enjoy!

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