The Moon Lights pattern is available in my shop.
I released the Moon Lights pattern last month, but have been meaning to write a post with more of the backstory on this particular quilt and how it came to be. The design began a couple years ago and — as is often the case for me — needed a bit of time to percolate before I finally made it real. You can see where I started and some of my design iterations below:
In the past I haven’t always been great about documenting my design process, but being able to look back and see how a given quilt evolved is really fun and I enjoy sharing it. The final quilt ended up being a combination of the latter two images — I used the pointed top and bottom of the “lantern” shape, but liked the look of the curved “lights” on the inside. I also removed the shapes on the left and right sides to create larger areas of negative space.
With my design finalized, I moved on to construction! After experimenting with different ways of sewing quarter circle blocks over the years, I’ve definitely converged on glue basting as my favorite method. It’s a bit time consuming, but I get results that I’m very happy with!
I auditioned several different shades of Aurifil 50wt thread for quilting, and ultimately chose a light, dusty purple that looked nice against the dark purple background, but didn’t stand out too much against the lighter fabrics of the lanterns and lights. I loaded the finished top onto my longarm sideways so that I could quilt straight lines that would run vertically from top to bottom on the finished quilt. This was the first thing I quilted after the painful thread tension issues I had with Cosmic Shores, so I did several tests to make sure my tension was ok and checked it every few lines!!
I had wanted to add circular accent quilting in the yellow parts of each “light” so when the longarming was done, I first tried stitching the circles on my domestic machine. Turning the bulky quilt smoothly enough to keep my circles properly spaced and my stitches looking good proved to be more difficult than I expected! I was pretty unhappy with the visibly wobbly result, so I ripped it out.
I then decided to try hand quilted accents, with the thought that it would be easier for me to control the spacing and keep my circles looking perfectly round. But I felt like the chunky look was too much for the rings, which are supposed to look light, airy, and glowy. I ripped that out too, and concluded that accent quilting was not meant to be! Sometimes that’s just how it goes.
I finished the quilt in late October, just in time to enter it in QuiltCon, and I was very happy to learn last month that it was juried into this year’s show in the Modern Traditionalism category! I added a label and hanging sleeve and shipped it off to the MQG last week and look forward to seeing it hanging in the show next month.
If you’d like to make your own, the pattern is in my shop!
The stats:
- Quilt measures 54″ x 60″.
- Fabrics are Kona Cotton in Robin Egg, Niagara, Water, Malibu, Mango, School Bus, Mac & Cheese, Papaya, Banana, and Purple.
- Batting is silk, brand unknown.
- Pieced with Aurifil 50 wt thread in #2600 (dove gray).
- Quilted on my Handi Quilter Avante with Aurifil 50 wt thread in #6733 (Twilight) and coordinating Fil-Tec Magna-Glide pre-wound bobbins.
