Stars in her Eyes – Juanita Collins

Today I am going to enter a couple of quilts in the blogger’s quilt festival! Each entry has to be a separate blog post, so you might get more than one today 🙂

This post is for the Hand-Quilted category.

I am entering Stars in Her Eyes, which I made for my lovely Nora last year. The original post about making the quilt along with more photos can be found here.

Here she is: isn’t she beautiful (I mean Nora, of course! but the quilt is beautiful, too).

The quilting is a simple pumpkin seed pattern with variegated thread by King Tut. I wanted the quilting to to be fresh and summery, so I didn’t want it densely quilted. This pattern suited it perfectly and gives motion to the stars.

Presenting…Stars in Her Eyes for Nora!

It’s finished! And it is beautiful! Beeee-uuuuu-ti-ful! I call it “Stars in Her Eyes” because all 17 year olds should have stars in their eyes, right? Take a look!

Every quilt has a story, and of course this one does too. The story of this quilt started about 12 years ago when Nora started kindergarten! I started making a quilt that I never finished until last year, when I gave it to another precious kindergartener. (Read Jade’s Quilt). So it has been on my mind all these years that Nora never got her quilt.

Last winter I decided to finally rectify that. It all started with one star block that I had to make for the We Be Learning Bee. I fell in love with stars, and wanted to see how many different kinds I could make – and the idea for Stars in Her Eyes was born. I spent many happy hours looking at star blocks and choosing the ones I wanted to try.

The quilt went through many incarnations before it finally materialized in its final form. There were many agonizing decisions…to sash or not to sash. What colour to sash with? One time almost gave up and put it away.

But as soon as I decided to do that, inspiration struck and I came up with the perfect solution… alternate the big stars with 12″ 9-patches that have a small star in the center patch. It worked wonderfully! In fact, making this quilt reminded me a lot of the process I went through when I choreographed At Last. The quilt knew what it wanted; I only had to stop and listen.