A galaxy of stars...

Hello Dear Reader!!

I was thinking this week about what I should choose for my WIP posting, and I got to thinking about my ticking/cutter quilt stars, since for the most part they have consumed the majority of my work this week! To refresh your memory from my last post, I had torn a bunch of red, green and red/white/blue fabrics for my stars and I was working on my cutter quilts--here are a few pictures of what I came up with in my quilty thoughts--

 Here they are quilted up! I used my free motion foot to do the quilting with--I thought that the randomness of the stitches really added to the 'primness' of the cutter quilts. I could just imagine a mom on the farm hurriedly stitching up a quilt to keep her family warm, wishing for the time and resources to  create a master piece, such as a Baltimore quilt, and dreaming of the time when life would slow a bit so she could ply her needle at her craft.

Then, after stitching the cutter quilt sections, I traced the smaller star on the back of the cutter quilt pieces to make them more random in shape and fabric placement. Here are some of the red, green and patriotic stars after they were cut out and are ready to sew onto the ticking stars!

Here the ticking stars with the patchwork stars stitched on, waiting to be tea-dyed--

Here they are after being dunked in my tea-dye solution, waiting to be baked to prim perfection! I like to use a rather strong solution of tea and I bake my items at 200 degrees, turning every 10-15 minutes or so, until dry. I like to lay drier pieces against ones that are still damp to get water marks, as if they had been in a chest or box that had gotten damp over the years.

And, last but not least, here are the stars, baked and cooled and ready to fly to new homes!

I hope you have enjoyed a peek into my creative process, as much as I have enjoyed sharing it with you! I will be adding these very soon to my Etsy and Artfire sites!

Until next time--be safe and happy creating!!

Karen