I knew I wanted the Modern Solid Stars design option to be on the cover of the pattern. I really loved the clean bubbly sparkly look of it. A lot of my patterns that are FQ friendly, typically show that feature in the cover sample so I wanted to change it up a bit this time.
Pretty quickly, I knew I wanted some subtle color play for the cover. I started playing in Illustrator and I settled on two different options and it took me days to figure out which one to make.
I really waffled between the two options but my love of black in quilts won out.
The solids I used are Bella Solids and the colors are: Baby Pink, Bleached White, Golden Wheat, Superblack, Graphite, Bunny Hill Blue and Ash.
I love how the greys also bleed into some blue tones. It adds a really fun monochromatic feel while mixing warm and cool tones.
So far we have shared in the Test Quilt and the Scrappy Quilt how I sewed together Mix + Match Stars. For Modern Solid, every single block is the same so the process is only slightly different when sewing everything together.
Sometimes when sewing, I really enjoy tuning out the world and doing something repetitive. Most times when I am in a big sewing session, I listen to music all day or I watch TV shows. This quilt is perfect for that. There is a heavy dose of chain piecing and you can really find a process and rhythm in it.
There is no mixing + matching between blocks in the Modern Solid Stars make. So it is up to you how you want to sew the quilt together - you can batch process say the chain piecing first, then all the flying geese, then the square in a square. Or you could work a few blocks at a time after your Irish Chain components are made. For this make, I did all the batch processing possible upfront to see how it felt. It felt a little heavy in sewing sewing sewing but then when it came to assembly the quilt blocks together, it FLEW by. I loved that.
Soon I had all my components done and ready to be sewn together. This was really the first time seeing how they colors will flow and interact with each other and it made me very happy.
Now it's time to start building the Champagne Block!
Seeing this block come together really solidified my excitement for the pattern. I can't wait to make another Modern Solids quilt.
I took photos of all the blocks laying out on the floor to make sure I had them rotated properly before sewing the rows together. From the photos, everything looks so broken apart and the Golden Wheat color looks jarring to me. I did get a bit nervous at this point that suddenly I wasn't going to like it or the quilt wouldn't turn out smooth looking like I had wanted.
But, once I sewed the first row together my fears went away. All the pieces together started to make sense.
Very quickly I had all my rows sewn together. I think from the time where all my blocks were done and I started sewing my rows to the finished top - was less than 90 minutes. I love a quick quilt assembly!
I snapped photos of the finshed top throughout our house but for whatever reason that day, the light was driving me nuts. It was hard to get the colors to read true to real life but I tried my best!
We attempted some quilt top photos outside in downtown Portland and it was winndddyyyyy.
The quilt top was the hardest one for me to decide on a pantograph for longarm quilting. I didn't want anything to take away from it's simplicity but I also didn't want the quilting to be too simple. I wanted an all over design that did not have any directionality in it. After much debate, I landed on Grande Chevron Tumblers. Karlee of Sewinspired2day quilted this one up for me and it turned out GORGEOUS.
It took me awhile to decide on the binding for this quilt as well. Everything about this quilt took more time for me to make a decision on - which is rare. I am usually incredibly decisive but I really floundered on this one. We finally landed on a slightly brighter pink called Princess.
I bought a few bottles of Champagne to bring to this shoot for props. It was fun to take some photos with this quilt and champagne being poured into the bottle. We had tried to get a photo of my popping the cork but it came out so fast and easily that it made both myself and Amy jump. She never snapped a photo of that. ha!
The day after we did this photoshoot, Luke and I went on a little desert getaway to Palm Springs. It was perfect and warm and much needed. It was also a little wild to do it right before a quilt release but we made it work. AND I brought this quilt with me to the desert. We did a day trip to Joshua Tree and I had to snap some photos of it there.
There we have it! The Cover Girl has officially gotten her moment in the spotlight.
