Is this Magnitudes?

Do you ever take a pattern and not only choose different fabrics than what the designer used but also completely re-imagine contrast and blending?  An alternate version of Magnitudes has been bouncing around in my head for several months and I finally caved and set everything else aside.

Milky Way from Magnitudes pattern by Canuck Quilter Designs 2018

I really love blue and white quilts.  I can't believe I haven't made one since Clear Skies in 2013. It was time!

Milky Way from Magnitudes pattern by  Canuck Quilter Designs 2018.

I named this one Milky Way, but it is made from the Magnitudes pattern. In Magnitudes the stars are a solid color on a scrappy colour background, but I flipped that around here.  The stars are the pop of colour instead.  By matching the block background to the sashing and borders, I made all the stars float. 


This quilt top was made entirely from contents of my scrap bins.  In addition to cutting instructions that tell you how many strips to cut and sub-cut when you are using yardage, the pattern includes a table that summarizes size and number for each piece in the quilt. You can dip into your scraps, even odd shaped and small pieces, and just keep digging and cutting until you have the right number of pieces. Even the white background is made up of various white-on-white print scraps.  I think it adds interest to all that white background space. This photo of the quilt in progress shows that best.

Scrappy white-on-white background

Quilting the quilt was a bit of an adventure. My original plan was to freemotion loose hooked swirls all over the background.  Stop.  Nothing else.  It was supposed to be quick and easy, but by the time I had quilted half the swirls that are in the finished quilt, I knew I was having trouble with loose and open.  My swirls were tight and dense and I thought they looked too busy to cover the whole background.  I went to bed, slept , and came back with a different plan.  I extended the swirls across the rest of the width, like a path, and switched to my trusty walking foot to do all the straight line quilting.  I was tempted to add some freemotion ruler work circles in the border, but decided that would be too fussy and distract from the swirls and the planned scallops.  I settled for using the rulers to make quicker work of the piano key quilting.

This is the baby size, but I doubled the width of the border to give me enough width to cut a scalloped edge.  A coworker told me I was a glutton for punishment when I told her I planned to scallop the borders, but in the end it was not as frightening as I feared.  I admit I took several deep breaths before I wielded the scissors on a perfectly good, almost finished quilted quilt!

No turning back! Scalloping the edge.

I used Darlene Zimmerman's excellent instructions from her book The Quilter's Edge. I think the key was her tip to draw the scallop, sew on the drawn line, and not cut along the scallop until after the binding is sewn to the front of the quilt.  Also, use single fold bias binding.  The bias helps when going around the curves and the single fold minimizes bulk in the Vs between scallops.

Before I sign off I have to share the back!  I swear I wasn't thinking about the scallops at all when I pieced the back.  I had orphan blocks from two or three years ago that were the right colour and size to add the needed extra width to my length of backing fabric. Aren't they a perfect fit?

Orphan blocks on the back of Milky Way

May I say I love, love, love this finish?

Linking up with 

DrEAMi at mmm!Quilts