Traveling Stars

Here's a quilt of my own that I am going to keep for me! It's an extra long twin, since I'm so tall. Hand pieced and hand quilted. 3 years in the making, but worth it! So much fun to have it done and be able to enjoy snuggling underneath it. The pattern is actually called Grandmother's Stars, but I've taken it so many places with me, that it needed to be called Traveling Stars. It's been to Roseburg, Oregon for the family campout, to Des Moines, Iowa for the APQS rep rally at least twice. I've taken it to more Weight Watcher meetings than I could possibly begin to count but everyone has seen it grow from small pieces to the completed quilt. I used 1930's reproduction fabrics for the stars, and muslin for the background. The batting is wool, my new favorite! Quilts by hand like a hot knife going through butter, is so light, yet so warm, and washes and dries beautifully.

I should have taken a "before" photo of the backing, but I thought there was lots of time. During the spring of 2010, I was riding my bike to a Weight Watchers meetings. I got caught in an absolute deluge at the beginning of my 30 mile trip. I called my darling husband asking him to come and get me several times, but just kept leaving him messages. With each phone call, I was getting colder, and more frustrated that he wasn't answering either the home phone or his cell. I'd ride a little farther and call him to let him know where I was when he arrived to come and get me. I finally ended up at a tire store waiting room, dripping like a drowned rat, and oh so close to tears of frustration. He came and got me, and I came home to dry out. After I had him take me to my meeting so that I could weigh in! A few days later I got my quilt out to show my mother in law and to work on, and I found a large orange-ish stain on the back of my quilt. Seems that the rain had soaked through my quilt bag that had been strapped to the back of my bike, and leeched color from the wooden quilting hoop onto the white backing of my quilt. My initial thought, that lasted for about 2 seconds, was to toss the project, it was ruined by this stain. Remembering that I'd been working on it for 2 years at this point reminded me that it probably wasn't ruined after all. I'd go ahead and finish the quilt, and hope that the stain came out when I washed it the first time. If not, the stain added to the authentic 1930's look to the quilt. I don't know if it was simply washing, or the "Grandma's Secret Stain Remover" that did the trick, but the stain is gone!

Since I discovered that stain, I went out to the fabric store and purchased myself a piece of gore-tex waterproof fabric. I made a quilt bag cover that has an elastic cord around the edges so that I can have my project on the bike without fear of additional water soaking into it. While the old tried and trues of cotton quilting fabrics and batting are great, you've got to love the new technology and the fabric that it creates too.