Jean's starburst

Jean's quilts are so fun to work on for many reasons: choice of colors and fabrics, she lets me have free rein (within reason), her foundation piecing is really good, and they're contemporary -- eliciting a whole different and challenging approach to the quilting than do traditional quilts.

I sat with this top for awhile and considered possibilities. Nothing slid into place in my brain for some time until I noticed the piecing lines connecting the outer spikes to the medallion. Those lines create a circle. That reminded me of something I'd saved in my great big inspiration notebook, a collection of magazine tearsheets, advertising, photos and designs from various sources.

I like mandalas and their inherent movement of pattern in several different directions. Now, Jean's top already moved, so the concept of a star bursting from the center outward on a spinning circle really made me happy.


With ample color in the fabrics, the use of warm thread colors would have been overkill. I wanted contrast to make the quilting show up, but only low contrast, so I opted for the light blue found in the tone-on-tone background fabric. I used a really thin thread, and if I had to do it all over again, I might opt for a heavy thread in some places.

I knew I wanted radiating lines somewhere. They're so powerful. These seemed to fit best outside the circle, as the spikes already point that way. I like the way they cross at the corners. Why didn't I just run those lines off the 2 borders? It didn't occur to me at the time, but that would have been a sensible option.


Now what to do inside the circle. This is the kind of thing I think about as I drift off to sleep. Having searched fruitlessly for a motif, I decided to design one. I really liked the orange swoop shape, so I played with that, freehanding something similar. This is where doubt likes to creep in: Is this anything? Is this anything good? Is this going to look stupid? Dare I take a chance? Fortune favors the brave, and besides, I didn't have any better ideas. And I'm willing to rip out stitches if need be. So, I decided to repeat the swoop as many times as would fit, have them point the other way for movement and be about the same size as the orange original. That left me with just the space above the orange swoop, which I filled with flowing, horizontal lines of echo. I stood back to admire and ... hated it.


The swoops didn't show up. Might dimensional quilting be the answer? Threadplay came to mind. Yes. The thin thread -- So Fine! #50/3 by Superior -- is appropriate for threadplay, so off I went laying in color, overlapping little circles like spun sugar in the background, because there are circles all over the background fabric. I filled a few other spaces with some designs by Linda Taylor, whose pattern books are an essential part of my bag of tricks. And when I was done, I liked it at last. And Jean liked it, so it was worth it in the end.