Lonestar WIP Finally Finished!

Well, I knew it had been a long time, but after looking back in the blog archives the last time I really worked on his quilt was April of 2013! Ouch. It's been folded up, basted and partially quilted ever since then.  What held me up was filling in all the negative space around the stars I had straight-line quilted. I had only started FMQ in January of that year and I lacked the confidence to do anything more than a stipple, and I wanted to do something more "special" that stipple!

Over a year and a lot of FMQ later I have decided that the stipple is pretty awesome, especially when it comes to finishing a project quickly! So I unfolded this baby, dusted it off, and stippled in the rest of the background.

The pieced star was made based on Better Off Thread's tutorial. Please forgive the less than stellar meeting of the points! There are some cute fabrics in there, including the little mini marching elephants I used in this quilt.  I quilted the star by outlining both sides of the seam using my walking foot as a guide. Doing that gave me the idea to quilt a couple more partial stars in the negative space using the same motif.

This kind of quilting is really hard to get a picture of! There is most of a star on the upper right of the quilt and a corner of one on the lower right.

Wilson assisted with pictures, as per usual. As you can see, I did indeed do a loose stipple in the space around the stars.

I love this pieced back almost as well as the front. Because I was using brown thread on the front, and didn't want to fight with the FMQ tension trying to get it just perfect I opted to use brown on the back too. The contrasting thread shows through all the quilting designs.

The Michael Miller Wooden Horses came in a scrap pack from Hawthorne Threads and I have used every stitch of that fabric! Love those little horsies with the doily type motif on them.

The large textured aqua came from Connecting Threads, don't remember exactly what color it was. That orange plaid came from a scrap pack, too. And of course there's the IKEA number fabric.  The quilt is kind of a funny shape, about 55"x70", so it's long and skinny.

I have had in mind to give this one to some friends of mine if I ever got it done... but I think I might give them a choice of a couple different quilts I have on hand. Every time I have done that people surprise me with their choice!

For the first time in a long time I have no quilts sitting around partially quilted and unfinished! What finishes are you celebrating this week?

Linking to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.