Tyger! Tyger! Burning Bright

Finally! Schedules, weather, and the stars all aligned today, allowing me to take some pictures of my completed Star Quilt Along quilt.



I need to figure out a way to take better pictures of large quilts like this. Or find some additional quilt-holding hands. But we did the best we could with the two of us.


The majority of the back is pieced from what was left of the fabrics I used in the blocks. The one exception is the periwinkle blue flower print. I had to buy that to have enough for the back.

A couple of close-ups:


First I quilted the long diagonal lines through the green setting blocks. Next I free-motion quilted in the ditch around all of the colored pieces. I had never done that before and it took awhile before I was really consistently making it into the ditch. But by the end, I was feeling pretty good at it. My only regret is that I really should have used a clear thread to do that instead of the white, because my mistakes are really visible. Then I did a lot of pretty dense stippling over all of the background. Finally, I quilted my border pattern, finished all of the edges by hand, and then completed all of the quilting to the edge of the quilt. All of the quilting ended up using nearly 4 entire spools of thread! I used Superior Threads King Tut 40/3 cotton in White Linen (color 971), 500 yard spools. (Wonderful thread, by the way.) It took a long time to get it all done. But so worth it!


Yay prairie points! They turned out so wonderfully, I could not be happier. They were pretty time consuming though, so I doubt I’ll be making a habit out of them. Fun fact: one side has a different number of points than the other three. (I know this because I later found a prairie point laying on the floor. Sigh. I had been wondering why they weren't spacing out quite right.) This picture also offers a closer glimpse of the border design. I like how it sort of breaks up all of the stippling some and frames the quilt.

The label:


I’ve named this quilt “Tyger! Tyger! Burning Bright.” My inspiration fabric was the tiger print. The quilt has lots of stars. And I have always loved the William Blake poem. It just seems like a good name. (And even though the picture doesn’t show it, there really is a “t” at the end of “bright” in the label. It’s just hiding in the wrinkles. I double checked to be sure!)

Many thanks to the amazing and wonderful amandajean for hosting this super-fun quilt along. She is an inspiration!