Machine Quilting the "Exploding Star"

I am a "quilt piecer" who desparately wants to be a true "quilter".  I have many quilt tops I have patiently cut and pieced together, but I believe that in order to be able to truly call myself a "quilter", I must also quilt and bind my tops.

This is not a new goal.  I've always wanted to be a quilter, as a matter of fact I took a machine quilting class from Carole Frye back in August of 2003.  How do I remember the teacher's name and date of the class?  It's a habit I formed long ago to write the date and teacher's name in the top left corner of any class handouts I receive and I saw this information as I opened my required class book, "Machine Quilting Made Easy" by Maurine Noble.

I reviewed the notes I had made from class, threaded my machine with monofiliment thread in the top and regular thread in the bobbin.  I installed the walking foot on my machine and away I went...soon, my 32"x32" Exploding Star quilt was actually quilted.

That was easy.  Why did I wait so long to finish it?  Who knows, all that matters is now it is quilted and ready to bind.  :)

Since the Exploding Star pattern was made with the Square in a Square method (developed by Jodi Barrows), I had a few leftover strips of red fabric I had used in the piecing of my quilt.  I sewed a variety of the red strips together and thought this was what I wanted to use for the binding. 

I auditioned it on one side of my quilt...what do you think?

I decided it was too distracting.  Off to plan "B"...I selected two red tone-on-tone fabric strips and pieced those into binding.

I'm pleased with the results, and thanks to advance planning (machine stitching the binding on and pinning the binding to the back), I was able to finish hand-sewing the binding in between plays at my son's football passing league games yesterday.

The Exploding Star pattern can be found in "Advancing On II" by Jodi Barrows.  It looks way more complicated than it really is.  With the Square in a Square system you don't cut or sew triangles, just fabric strips and squares into units.  The magic is in the trimming of the sewn units.

This small quilt, wall-hanging or table topper would make a great gift in any color combination.  It was easy-peasy to quilt in a straight line pattern, too.

Do what you like, and like what you do.

Until next time,

<3 Annette