Good morning everyone, happy Monday to you! I hope you had a great weekend. I must say, I did indeed have a great weekend, capped off my some super happy mail that was delivered to me on Saturday - the summer 2014 issue of Modern Quilts Unlimited with my name on the cover. Seriously?! Yep, that's my name all right. Wow. Granted, that's not my quilt, but gosh, to see my name on a magazine cover is just beyond astounding to me.

The summer 2014 issue of Modern Quilts Unlimited features an interview with me, which was a lot of fun to do, as well as several photos of some of my favorite quilts, and one of my favorite photos of the munchkin, working away in EQ on a sick day a few months ago. He was super excited when I showed him the picture of him in a real, live magazine.


There's also a pattern from me in the magazine, called Exploding Star. Exploding Star is (shocker) a paper-pieced star pattern that uses several different templates to create the exploding effect. I sewed this one up in assorted solids from Modern Solids II by Alissa Haight Carlton, and I love the sparkling effect they give to the piecing.


The quilting on this mini is done in several different coordinating shades of 50 wt Aurifil, my go-to free-motion quilting thread. There's several different styles of fmq throughout the quilt, in the different areas, which was a lot of fun to do. I also did some "faux" straight line quilting, where I use my free-motion foot and outline certain areas of the quilt. My relationship with my walking foot is a bit lackluster, so I rarely use it - instead I do straight-ish line quilting with the free-motion foot, which is way more comfortable for me.



This issue should be hitting your local Barnes & Nobles and Jo-Anns and such in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes peeled for it. There's some really fun patterns inside, including a fun pixelated guitar pattern by Penny Barnes. Have a great day!

Quilt Stats
name: Exploding Star
pattern: by yours truly, available in the Summer 2014 issue of Modern Quilts Unlimited
fabrics: assorted solids from In the Beginning's Modern Solids II
quilting: linear L's, zig zags, pulleys, wishbones, and faux straight-line quilting all in assorted coordinating shades of Aurifil 50 wt cotton thread

This quilt was something I sketched out nearly two years ago and it languished in my design notebook until I pulled into EQ a little over a year ago and shared it with the lovely folks at Modern Quilts Unlimited. I had a crazy idea of using the Riley Blake neon solids that had just come out at the time, and thought it would make a really bold quilt...bold is quite possibly a giant understatement with this quilt!