Galaxies Converge – How it Happened

Now that voting and judging has been completed I can share with you all the story of how my challenge piece came together.  If you want to look over the rules/guidelines of this particular Project QUILTING challenge her you go:  http://kimlapacek.com/2010/07/season-1-challenge-5-stars-over-america.html When I first saw the challenge I immediately knew I wanted to converge some galaxy printed fabric. I already had some in my stash but it wasn’t ‘pattern-y’ enough so I made a quick trip to the local quilt shop – Mill House Quilts. I picked up a few yards of fabric I thought would work and ended up going with the fabric shown in the upper right, a fun, large printed galaxy and the fabric in the lower left – a sparkly fabric that reminds me of twinkling stars (it’s actually a Christmas fabric).   Then I went to my stash and picked out two different hand-dyes that I thought would work and went with it. Looking at these four pieces laid out like this I sort of second guessed myself.  Then I figured I can always do another one with different fabrics if it didn’t turn out how my mind thought it would. I followed the method clearly shown in the book Ricky Tims’ Convergence Quilts: Mysterious, Magical, Easy, and Fun.  The first step was to do due the strips in one direction and then mix them up before sewing them together like shown above.  *Side Note* Ricky Tims’ instructions were clear and easy to follow. I stepped outside my square by actually following them!  I rarely follow directions and just sort of use them as a general guideline – but this time I actually followed them and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I then flipped the project over and converged my fabrics the other way per the instructions. Here is the main portion converged!  At this point I thought I was going to make this into a circle and make it look like a person was looking through a telescope at the night sky.  After thinking about it further though I just couldn’t bear to cut off my tiny, tiny squares in the corner – I never sew things that small there was no way it was going to be cut and tossed…now I needed a new plan. So, I did a thin border in black and then did a convergence-like thicker boarder using the fabrics from the interior convergence.  I thought this helped create some fun dimension.The next step I took was cutting out different planets and stars from my galaxy fabric and fusing them onto the rest of the quilt.  I think this helped create some fantastic movement in the quilt.  Above is the first step I took in this embellishment but I didn’t like how it was sort of symmetrical in all four corners…I didn’t want that… So I added a few more planets and stars toward the lower middle portion of the quilt to unbalance things just a touch.   My final steps were to do some quilting – which I did in straight line rays and some free motion swirls.  I also added some beautiful Angelina Fibers to the lower left corner to create a shooting star or comet look.  I honestly could not be happier with how this turned out!   Project QUILTING has allowed me to be more creative with my quilts.  I have stopped thinking so commercially with what I’m making and it’s just felt fantastic.  Also, there are certain things I’ve been wanting to do – log cabins, converge a commercial print – that I just hadn’t gotten to.  These challenges are making that happen.    Winners for the Public, Judges, and Randomly Drawn Contest will be posted tomorrow and a new challenge goes up at NOON on Sunday, July 18th.  Stay tuned!