Enchanting Stars Be Colourful Custom Free Motion Quilting

This pattern was published by Jacqueline de Jonge (Be Colourful Quilts) and is called Enchanting Stars.  My client Julie made this quilt and left the rest up to me!  I love how this quilt came together, you can check out the YouTube video here:

Enchanting Stars Video

These quilts are so striking with all the gorgeous ombre colourwork.  But this does hold a particular challenge when it comes to thread.  I've used gold thread, black thread, variegated thread, and even changed thread colours to match each piece!  But I've never used a MonoPoly thread on my long arm.  I decided that this was the quilt!  After I spent two days antagonizing about the designs...

I knew immediately that I wanted to add ghost quilted flying geese in all of the pieced solid spaces, and I thought I should plan to use a lot of fluid free-motion quilting designs because of all the stitch-in-the-ditich I was going to have to do.  But I didn't want to make all of the spiky bits the same I wanted a variety of designs that were cohesive and complimented each other. 

As I was contemplating my attack I decided to use a mixed pebble design in the black background, but I needed to add some other round designs so I settled on ribbon candy because I know how to make it bend around a circle easier than a blunt piano key.  The blunt piano key can get a little tricky when you try and change the angle on a curve. 

With my basic plan drawn out, I was ready for some stitching.  The darker fabrics were very challenging to quilt because of the silver pattern.  It took me DAYS to get all the stitches into this little quilt!  The sitch-in-the-ditch was intense but so necessary. 

I know someone is going to ask what brand of thread I used and honestly, I don't know, I just had this one in my stash.  One of the very first quilts I quilted on my domestic machine I quilted with this thread 😆 and that was at least 14 years ago.  I was surprised how little I struggled I thought for sure I was getting myself into a world of hurt but I very rarely broke thread, I used Glide 40wt in my bobbin and switched to a 14 needle. 

I enjoyed quilting using this MonoPoly thread and I think I will invest in some new larger cones.  This past weekend I presented my first Zoom presentation to the British Columbia Longarm Quilter's Guild.  I wrote a new presentation about custom borders and how to fudge the math.  I think it went well!  Let me know if you would like me to present to your longarm guild.  I've got two presentations and am thinking up new ones all the time. 

Thanks for watching and reading.

Sam