Gloria's is probably right up there with my favorite quilt that I've ever made. It's kind of funny because one of my
first favorites had a similar color scheme. The design/layout is one that just came to me. I sketched it out once on paper, and then adjusted it slightly to come up with this. The variety of scale of the stars and squares allowed me to use some bigger chunks of fabric that I had as well as sneaking in some small leftover bits that have special meaning (like the purple paw print that all of the kids' quilts have in them). I particularly like how the stars (the large one and one of the small ones) break the borders.
The quilting was as much fun as the piecing - the stars are outlined with varying thicknesses of space between the rows, and the field is stipple/swirl free-motion quilted, making the back of the quilt almost as interesting as the front.
As I've done on other more recent quilts, I've taken advantage of the seams that are a necessity to get quilt-sized backing fabric, and accented it with a strip of left over tidbits of the front fabrics.
Gloria was about three years old when I finished the quilt.
