Moonglow: Dad's 70th Birthday Quilt

Close-up, Moonglow

My father turned seventy this week. In honor of this landmark occasion, my mom declared that he needed a quilt ("everyone has a quilt but me," she reported him saying). Seventy's a big deal, and Dad's a big guy, in size, reputation, and personality. We needed an ambitious quilt.

I had been admiring Jinny Beyer's Moonglow quilt kit on Craftsy. I especially admired the rich, luminous play of color for which Breyer is so well-known. I included it among a selection of possible quilts that I shared with my mom, and she was drawn to Moonglow like a magnet.

Foundation pieced compass block, "Sea of Knowledge" - look at those points!

The quilt includes patterns for eleven compass blocks and two courthouse stairs blocks. The compass blocks can each be pieced in one of three ways: by hand, by simple machine piecing, and by foundation piecing. My experience with these techniques was a classic Goldilocks tale.

Jinny Beyer is famous for piecing by hand, so I thought I would give that a try. I found it relaxing, and it was easy to line up points - more so than with regular machine piecing. After completing two blocks by hand, I knew I would not finish the quilt on time for my Dad's birthday with this method. I switched to machine piecing, which was fast, for sure, but it was more difficult to line up the points, and I had to unstitch almost as much as I stitched. Next I tried foundation piecing. This bowl of porridge was just right. It took longer than simple machine piecing, but the resulting accuracy was well worth. For future blocks like this, foundation piecing will definitely be my method of choice.

After I completed the quilt top, I wanted to do something special for the back that would complement the beautiful colors of Moonglow. It also had to be something I could piece quickly - the birthday clock was ticking. I found a pattern called "Golden Rectangles" in Jinny Beyer's book Quiltmaking by Hand. For the fabrics, I used scraps from the Moonglow kit as well and from my stash:

Golden Rectangles, the back of my dad's Moonglow quilt

Moonglow is a big quilt -- 86" x 86". For quilting, I had the idea that straight-lines on the diagonal would be much easier to quilt than vertical lines, as there would be less bulk to fit through the throat of the machine (I was right!). A piece of crown molding I found in the shed made a perfect guide for spacing and marking the quilting lines:

marking quilting lines with a piece crown-molding

   Here is Moonglow, finito:

And here is my Dad, loving his new quilt: