Lonestar Hexagon, finished

Oh my gosh. Accomplished doesn't even begin to describe how I felt when I finished this quilt. Not only was it the THIRD quilt I finished before the holidays it was also the largest, most difficult, and most 'off the wall'. 

Dubbed the "Lonestar Hexagon" this quilt has many hands that participated in the making. All of this started when I decided to figure out how to make a 6-pointed lonestar block for a quilting bee I was in a couple years ago. I had a lot of fun making my block, and I hope the others enjoyed theirs as well (tutorial here). Then I decided I didn't actually have enough blocks to achieve the size I wanted, so I enlisted Mom's help to make a few more blocks with me. One of our results became the center of the quilt. 

Similar to Jasmine's quilt, this one went through several iterations in my head and an improvisational assembly process. That was where I left off last time I wrote about this quilt, and also where it was when I stepped off the plane in Chicago. The back I planned to use was too small for what turned out to be a rather large quilt top, so I just folded up the top, packed it in my suitcase, and planned to purchase backing fabric and batting when I got there. 

I'm SO glad I did because otherwise I would never have thought to use corduroy. I found this beautiful pinky peach small wale corduroy and got the rest of the bolt! Six yards, it turns out, is quite a substantial amount of fabric and also exactly the yardage needed to assemble a back that would accommodate this top. (I left the scraps of backing and batting, which were pretty good sizes, in my Mom's sewing room hoping she will find some way to use them.) I spent a lot of time on the floor basting. Nothing like a deadline to motivate me through! The quilting was simple because I just didn't have the stamina to do anything fancy. I did lines from point to point across the center to make wedges and then stitched in the ditch one row in along each side to get the outer parts of the quilt fixed into place. The binding fabric has navy, which matches the background triangles on the front, and a pretty aqua print that sets off the back nicely. And who am I kidding, any color would go with the front! 

Speaking of which, here it is in all it's glory. It's crazy and scrappy and colorful and wonderful. I think it suits my niece Samara to a 't' and she was really excited about it. In fact, I'm told it is "really comfortable and I fell asleep right away." It's kind of an odd form factor for a quilt in that it is a huge hexagon, but it totally works. It ended up 54" on a side, 108" point to point, and 90" side to side - pretty big! That, for reference, is a queen sized bed in the picture and there is plenty of overhang. 

I'm so pleased both with how this turned out and with having it out of my work in progress queue. I think I can start the new year with a fresh sewing slate and finally tackle some projects that have been on my mind but that I've been putting off because I knew I had some major things in progress already. How's that for a plan, 2016?