Single Block Quilt Tutorial Series - Stretched Star - Part 4, Batting, Basting, Quilting and Binding

Again, I've decided to rely on the expertise of some of my favorite quilters for their finishing techniques as I have a long arm machine, and therefore, basting and domestic machine quilting are not my specialty.

One of my all time favorites, Oh Fransson (Elizabeth Hartman) has an excellent tutorial on batting and basting.  Check out her  Making the Quilt Sandwich post and get a great lesson on this process.  If you are not familiar with Oh Fransson, be sure to peruse her entire site as it is chocked full of eye candy and practical lessons.

 For domestic machine quilting, I have to rely again on Elizabeth  Hartman.  Her Free-Motion Quilting Basics tutorial is just perfect for beginners.  Elizabeth's post also provides a link to the Modern Quilt Guild Blog, where her technique is expanded to work with larger quilts.

Lastly, for binding, I reference the Red Pepper Quilts blog Binding Tutorial.  Here Rita Hodge explains in detail her process for making and applying straight grain binding.  There are many different binding methods out there but in my opinion, Rita's yields the best results.

Before I close, I thought I'd show two additional ways that a stretched star quilt can be arranged.

The quilt on the left is made using just two colors for the points; one light and one dark blue on each block.  The colored points are then arranged in alternating columns.  The quilt on the right adds a third color; bright orange.  These colored points are arranged horizontally, with the light and dark blues alternating.  These are both crisp, smart looks.

Now it's tome to get to work and finish our stretched star quilts!