Succulent Star | a quilt for Amanda

I made this quilt as a gift for my sister-in-law. For as long as I've known her she's had tons of house plants... she's one of those people who loved succulents before succulents were cool. I had been wanting to make her a quilt for a few years but didn't feel inspired. When Heather Givans debuted her Succulents collection for Windham I knew it would be perfect for her. To me, the succulents symbolize new life and growth, two things that I hope will be realized in my sister-in-law's life. I chose this simple giant star pattern because I wanted it to be a quick sew! The hardest part was choosing which fabrics should go where, but I'm actually pretty happy with my use of value.

The back actually took me longer to piece because, as usual, I tried to use up most of my scraps from the front. I ended up needing to buy a bit more fabric and decided to go with the versatile crosshatch print from Carolyn Friedlander's Architextures collection. I bought it two separate times because I needed more than I initially realized (quilt math is not my strong suit), and I'm not sure if I bought two different colors or if the print would be that different from two different bolts. Does anyone else see the color variation in the bottom left compared to the top left and bottom right? Just curious...

I used my aunt's long arm machine to quilt wonky spirals in horizontal rows across the whole quilt. Long arming is so quick compared to quilting on a domestic machine! I'm spoiled now and will always want to use my aunt's machine to quilt larger quilts, I know it. The quilt is bound with C+S sprinkles on black which I LOVE and will definitely use as binding again. From what I understand, the quilt is well loved by my sister-in-law and by her cat, so I'm calling it a success!