Project Quilting 15.2: Sky Color

This week's Project Quilting 15.2 challenge theme is Sky Colors. Participants were challenged to create a project that takes inspiration from the colors of the sky, but exclude or use less than 10% of the usual cerulean blue color.

I decided to create a night sky and pulled this rich and very textured palette of fabric swatches from Fabmo which includes silvers, dark blues, charcoal, and black fabrics. 

Next I started to gather a variety of block prints and stamps. I knew I had a commercial stamp with small stars but was having difficulty locating it in my studio. Despite looking in my collection of stamps and various bins, I could not find it! I went to look one more time and opened the drawer where I thought it should be. Alas, it was not there, but this ArtFoamies foam face stamp was looking up at me. What was an initially nebulous design idea suddenly emerged with this as a central moon shape! I did a bit of block printing using two different Memento Luxe ink colors to have a few options and alternates just in case!

All my fabrics were fused with Wonder Under...

And a very rough sketch was made as a road map for my project. Note that I did find that stamp the next day, but it was too late as I was much more excited for this new design direction!

In preparation for quilting, the fabric swatches were fused onto squares of black craft felt which doubled as both my batting and my quilt backing.

While I love the textures of these fabrics, I rarely know the fiber content. One of the fabrics shrunk slightly while fusing on the Wonder Under but I was able to flatten it. Unfortunately it really warped when I went to fuse it onto the black felt and it was ultimately scrapped from my project (but I may revisit it as a fabric bowl?!?

My trusty blue painter's tape was used to mark wedge shapes from each quilt sandwich before adding a bit of quilting, especially to the more solid-like fabrics. 

Matching Isacord threads were used for the quilting. Luckily--they contrasted well with the black felt backing and so the quilt sandwiches were turned over to the backside for trimming. While most of the fabrics are a bit thicker than traditional quilting cottons, the first batch required quite a bit of muscle to rotary cut. I decided to change the blade for the second batch. Wow! What a noticeable difference as the new blade cut through the layers like butter!

The next step was finishing three of the edges with Tulip dimensional fabric paint. All these painted edges required some resourceful solutions for drying. Thank goodness for my IKEA curtain hook clips, Raskog cart fitted with a thread rack, tiered serving tray, and our clothes drying rack (a great suggestion from my partner)! Batch after batch, my studio looked like a little quilted and painted wedge factory!

Instead of sitting around watching paint to dry, we made a froyo run, followed by a bit of photo editing and starting my blog post. When I returned to the studio, all my wedges were dry and safe to handle.

Up until this point, I honestly wasn't sure how the final assembly would all come together. At first I thought it might be easier to start with the outside and work my way into the center, but there were too many unknowns with this approach. So like most of my mandalas, I started with the center and worked my way out one ring at a time. My portable ironing board had a radial grid which helped to align all the wedges before glue basting. 

The glue basted units still required careful handling to transport to my sewing machine for a ring of topstitching.

Adding each ring of wedges presented its own share of technical challenges, requiring a bit of creative engineering along the way.

But with patience and persistence, the rings came together...

...perhaps with an occasional set back or two along the way. My Juki TL-2010 sewing machine is a real workhorse so I wasn't too worried about stitching through all the layers. I was extra careful to remove the pins before stitching, but still managed to break a needle at one particularly bulky section. As I was loading a new needle, it got stuck and it too broke! The third needle was the charm and I was back to stitching my way around the rings.

Shortly after 1 AM, my quilt was finished and I am absolutely in love with all the sparkle and texture achieved by both the fabrics and the stitching! 

Growing up in upstate New York, my father routinely plowed snow for his work. He was quite attuned to watching for moon rings, also known as a 22° halos, which often appeared the night before a big snow storm. This is my interpretation of those glowing winter moon auras.

"Winter Moon Ring Mandala" finishes 19" x 19"

Thank you for visiting! I encourage you to check out the Project Quilting page for all the brilliant Sky Color quilts made this week! 

And this is definitely a favorite finish for this month, so I am linking it up with January 2024 Favorite Finish monthly linkup hosted by Yvonne of @Quilting Jetgirl.