A Twinkly Star Lap Quilt

This lap quilt has been twelve years in the making.

I started this quilt 12 years ago when my eldest was a toddler. I thought that I could continue with my sewing hobbies after having a baby but boy was I wrong.

I had sewn the patchwork stars and border pieces and had started to hand sew clear beads and sequence onto the them. Sewing with a toddler was difficult because he was always attached to me and if I sewed he would crawl around and fiddle with the foot pedal. Dangerous!

So I decided to do it while he was napping but my children are all light sleepers and any noise would wake them. So I had to stop sewing because the sound of my noisy sewing sewing running always woke him up. Anyway, it took me a while to sew these patchwork stars and borders.

Next was the beading. I couldn't do it while my child was awake because as we all know children love to put things into their mouths and these tiny beads and sequences are so attractive to little eyes. So while he slept, I beaded and hand sew. 

You can't see it from the photos but all the printed fabric have beads and sequences on them. and it took me ages to do. When I finally finished these 4 panels, it was time to sew again with the sewing machine. But this was impossible as I've explained before (and then I had another child so it was even more impoosible). 

So away they went, all packed up and put away for the next 12 years until recently when I found them and decided to make them into a lap quilt. That is the life story of these four panels!

Now on to how I've made this lap quilt.

1 and 2 are the panels. I had 2 of each. 

This is how I pieced together the star:

3. I sewed the four panels together.

4. Then I sewed a border around the 4 joined panels.

1. I laid the panel over batting and undernealth the batting I had another piece of navy fabric for the back of the quilt.

2. I pinned all 3 layers together and cut off the excess batting. Then sewed all 3 pieces along the edges together.

3. I made bias binding by cutting 3cm strips of the printed fabric on the diagonal. I joined the strips together to make a long piece. Then I binded the edges using the bias binding that I've made.

So now I have a shiny lap quilt. Did I mentioned that the panels were originally for cushions? But after 12 years I no longer needed navy cushions so as with everything I turned them into lap quilts - you can't have too many (yes you can, I'll probably give this one away).