The Quilting of Starbright Part 2

This is Part 2 in quilting Starbright,

and is geared more toward longarmers, due to the use of rulers.  But there's no reason why, with a bit of practice, it could not be duplicated on a home machine.  

To view the quilt plan, check out Starlight quilting Part 1.

In this post, I'm going to go through the quilting on the blue/turquoise stars.  

I stitch in the ditch in almost all the seams, unless it interferes with the quilt design, such as the area below.

So, this star required some analyzing of the thread path, since not all seams where going to be stitched down and to minimize starts and stops.  And here's the plan:  starting in the seam at the bottom corner of the green arm (white star in the picture), and using a straight edge ruler, I stitched to the point. Turned and stitched in the seam and across the turquoise to the edge.  Then up the turquoise seam to the tip, and across to the where the turquoise meets green.

At the point, I backtracked over the longest line, 1/4" into the turquoise, and stitched another line toward the point and down the other side to make a 1/4" border.  From there, working the pebble fill, but in such a way that the stitching ended back at the corner (marked with the star).

Backtracking 1/4" on the long line again, my needle was now in the corner, where the green met turquoise.  Using a circle template that fit the design, I stitched from that corner across to the other corner.  Backtracked 1/4" on that arc and stitched a 1/4" border up the green to the point, and across into the turquoise hitting the arc again.

Using a chalk marker, I marked desired increments on both sides of that arm, and with the circle template, stitched back and forth to the marks.  Ta-da!  Zig zags!  Locked the stitches, and did the other three arms.

Now for the center.

A 1/4" circle border was stitched inside the first circle, then the same circle was used to stitch from one seam to another, giving the star an arc.

Once those four were stitched, I stitched in the ditch through the center seams.  To make the other points, the needle was put in the corner on the circle border, stitched across, then to a center point on the arc.

Then through the center to the opposing arc, and back to the point.

The same was done on the other side to finish, and repeated  for the other two points.

But I wanted a bit more, so I added the echoes to the curved points by starting at the stitching/purple seam intersection, went to the point, and down the other side. 

Involves stops and starts, but that's okay.

Now that you see how the design is broken down, it's really quite easy to stitch.  Now, go find creative uses for your rulers!  Remember--have fun!

Happy Quilting!