Hunter Star process

I have wanted to try making a hunter star quilt for a while now.  So with two other quilty friends we agreed to do a hunter star challenge. .. I took photos as I progressed through as you can see here.

My Tula Pink experiment

I am working my way through Tula Pink's fabulous book."100 modern quilt blocks", trialling different blocks and attempting to improve my accuracy. The plan is to quilt each block to then practice my free-motion quilting, before I compile the blocks into something. This way I can flick through my already growing stash and try out combinations and contrasts with the colouration as I go...

Not too keen on the colour balance of this block, I think the star fabric is too "sudden" against the teal elephant piece, or maybe the peculiar balance of the block design needs a more subtle interplay? I am angst ridden about the mismatch of the top to the lower part of this block too. I have a ready deconstructed it once to try and even out the disparity, but not sufficiently. I think I must have mis-cut the upper part...hmmm.

I really love the layout of Tula's book it is very simple but effortlessly clear, and the sketches are gorgeous..I want to compile an individual stash of just her fabrics... 

 The stars and elephants are better here, but I think this is bea=cause they are in smaller units and the red surround pulls them together nicely

My piecing is improving ....slowly....

The Fantail quilt

The quilt that took me 7 years to make...

This is from a design by Jenny Hunter published in NZ Quilter magazine in 2007... it was just shown as one block , but I loved working on it, though I had no idea about piecing or quilting. The reverse appliqué? ..working in the positive and negative was great fun to do...it doesn't bear close inspection. Last year I actually completed the top, but had no idea how to proceed.
Fortunately Charlotte Scott began a short quilting course at Cherry Park House, which I thought would teach me all I needed to know....ha!!
 Don't get me wrong the course was fabulous and Charlotte is a natural teacher; however i realised how little I knew , and how vast and varied this subject is....
 So... I took this to Ed Reid in Russell and he put it on his long arm quilter and quilted it in the lovely Waikato design ; repeating shield/koru ribbons. All I had to do was the binding. This is proudly on our bed, and I love to fall asleep under these colours and wake to them in the morning....

quilting: the start of my obsession. ...

I have been inspired by some excellent blogs to try and create my own. I am hoping to journalise my attempts at learning to quilt here. I began to quilt about 8 years ago when I came across a design by Jenny Hunter in the New Zealand Quilter magazine that I fell in love with. ..7 years later, I had finished the top but had no idea how to construct the quilt (the original design was a cushion cover sized block...mine had become a queen size quilt...)
To my relief I then came across a 6 week novice quilters workshop.
note to self...don't try to create a new blog on my new tablet 😤