Creating Moonstruck — Finally Finished

In my previous post I showed how I got to the fully pieced top for Moonstruck.  Here it is.

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All that’s left is the quilting.  For the background arcs (the blue and green areas) I knew I wanted to keep it simple, so I quilted them using concentric arcs.  I did this using the walking foot on my machine and spaced the arcs using the width of the foot as my guide (about a quarter inch).

Here it is with the background quilted.

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For the moons, I wanted to try to make each one unique.  Before I started the actual quilting, I printed photos of some of the moons, and using a Zentangle-like approach, I sketched out possible designs.  This helped me get a feel for quilting designs that would work.

Here’s one example of my sketch (on the left) and the actual quilting (on the right).

Here are a couple more examples of sketches and actual results.  You can see I didn’t always follow the sketch.

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The rust pattern on this moon reminded me of a bird, so I tried to capture that in the quilting.

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Here’s another close-up of the quilting:

And one more close-up.  For the quilting I used a variety of threads, but mostly heavier-weight polyester and rayon, some of it variegated.  I used a bit of metallic thread in the largest moon, but it didn’t behave very well so I quickly abandoned it.

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And here’s Moonstruck, finally completed.

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Ronny Cammareri: I love you.
Loretta Castorini: [slaps him twice] Snap out of it!  — Dialogue from Moonstruck, 1987, starring Cher and Nicolas Cage

Ronny Cammareri: This was painted by Marc Chagall. And, as you can see, he was a very great artist.
Loretta Castorini: It’s kind of little gaudy, don’t you think?
Ronny Cammareri: Well, he was havin’ some fun. — Dialogue from Moonstruck, 1987, starring Cher and Nicolas Cage