I am making this quilt to be auctioned off for our Church's fundraiser for the "Relay for Life" that a team from our Church is participating in. I need to have this done for the weekend of the 12th, so it can be either a silent auction or a raffle.
The quilting part is just not my strong point.
Any suggestions are welcome. I hope to try and start on this tomorrow.

I laid this on top of my sewing machine desk because the lighting is better and my living room floor is filled with backpacking supplies and equipment for my Dh's and DD's backpacking trip.

Beautiful quilt. I would probably start with stitch in the ditch, around all the stars and the borders. Maybe make stars in the 4patches,and shooting stars in the borders, and maybe meandering in the background with stars put in randomly. Hope this helps.

How about something like this. It make need some tweaking. If you don't want to outline the flowers in the center of the big blocks you could continue the arches? Add some stippling in certain areas you want to recede?

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20100903-gwt1k...wxmmr2sh7t.jpg[/IMG] You could use a circular template, bowl, jar, lid etc. to mark the arches. You could maybe even do them with your walking foot and not need to use FMQ unless you want to outline the flowers.

Wow, Candace, I think yours is better than mine. I never was very good at that part of it.

is there a logo for relay for life that can be incorporated into the quilting...perhaps in the square star block?

Very nice quilt.

Beautiful colors! Simple quilting will look great on this-

can't help w/the quilting part. but i really love those colors. beautiful.

If you go with candice's idea a french curve would work perfectly to mark it with. Just think of the curve of the design as ending in the exact middle of the block outside seam. This is how I marked my tablerunner and it went fast!

Much as I hate to promote the overall meander, I think it would lend well to this quilt as the piecing is so pretty the quilting wouldn't take away from it. Meander (aka stipple) is very easy and quick and very forgiving in placement so you can kind of just zone out in the quilting process.

In today's economy fundraising auctions simply don't bring in bids worthy of the item. I would hate to see you invest a lot more time and effort quilting this only to see it get a bid far far below it's value in just materials, let alone your time.

I 'sucked in' my breath when I saw that! It's gorgeous!!! Some good ideas from Candace & others. It's just beautiful!! Lots of money for your church! good luck!

Beautiful quilt, love the colors you chose. I would probably just to simple outline type quilting to make the stars pop. But, I'm really not good at this stuff, others know better.

Thank you, Actually the fundraiser is for "Relay for Life" A cancer research fundraiser. Our church just has a team participating in the event.

Just go on a diaganil from on corner to the other. Then when you have thet done do it again from the other. In other words you will criss cross your lines. Very easy

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am willing to take in some more. I have to go out and pick a ton of tomatoes and water the garden and water the roses. It may be tonight or tomorrow morning before I can start quilting on this thing.

How do you think it would look if I "mimic" the flowers in the large squares and sort of quilt a large 8 petal "daisy" on the large stars and maybe a smaller one on the smaller stars. Or another large daisy, same size on the large star that encompasses the smaller stars and 4-patches. I don't know. I have so many quilts that just sit around forever cause I can decide how to quilt them. I want this to look nice cause I want people to buy tickets or bid on it.

Beautiful quilt!!! :D

Beautiful! And thanks for supporting Relay For Life!

It is beautiful, they are lucky you were chosen to make a quilt for them.

My suggestion would be to kind of do an outline of the stars and squares ( an echo kind of thing) and FMQ on the borders. My opinion, flowers would get lost in the stars.

love the colour in your quilt