I had seen Dawn’s posts on Instagram sharing her Stella by Starlight quilt and thought it was absolutely stunning.  When she contacted me to quilt it I was thrilled!!  Terrified but thrilled.  Her only request was that it be quilted using only Free Motion.  Eek.  Creating digital quilting designs and free motion quilting are like 2 separate art forms.  Both incredibly challenging.  I like the precision and consistency of digital quilting although it is very labor intensive finding the right designs and setting them up so they stitch properly.  Free motion quilting is something I love to do but feel like I have tons to learn and need practice.  Doing mostly edge to edge quilting I don’t get a lot of practice time.  I was very nervous and really perseverated over this quilt for about a month.  Then in my usual style I just went for it.  I had planned a bunch of ideas but of course once I got the quilt on the frame I abandoned most of that and just did what came to me.  Unfortunately the quilting is very hard to see, but maybe that was a good thing, haha.  I did swirls in the black background which I love to do!  For the mini hexagon blocks I did different designs using arc and circle rulers.  The large hexagons were really fun.  I wracked my brain for what to do in the white areas.  I needed something where I could use a ruler and allowed me to move from each space without breaking thread, found it!  I love the design I thought it was unique and really kept with the spinning affect of the blocks.  You can’t see it but I did free motion feathers in the print triangles, I love feathers and so does Dawn!  The hexagon centers were the most terrifying.  I really wanted to break down and do a digital design but once I mustered up the courage I just went for it and did a circular feather design, gulp, did it!!!  Dawn was delighted with the result which is priceless to me and well worth the work!  My pictures don’t do it justice, if you visit Dawn’s website http://www.firstlightdesigns.com you can learn all about how amazing Dawn White is!