Shine at the Bloggers Quilt Festival

This little quilt banner hangs in the bathroom at my studio. It's a project that has really grown on me. I like the message of it both in process and result. I was wondering what the big deal was about paper piecing and if it was something I would like doing. At the same time, I wanted to play with volume and dimension. I don't think I completely nailed it as far as the fabric choices go, but I was determined to use fabrics from my stash, not buying anything for this. I drew the gem on my computer, starting at the center and adding the lines one at a time. I wanted the whole gem to be no bigger than a piece of paper. I printed it out, pinned it to warm and natural batting cut to the approximate size of my desired banner 12 x 23, and stitched the fabrics to the back side of it, starting at the center and moving out, stitching and trimming. Once the gem was complete, I continued to fill the banner with unbleached muslin. The gem was pretty on the muslin but didn't really shine. Leaving a border of the muslin, I added black. Now I had my pop, but not the full message. My shine lines at the top are little raw edged rectangles appliqued with gold thread. For the word "shine" I wrote on a rectangle of orchid fabric with a disappearing marker and then free motion stitched over my writing with the gold thread, appliqueing the word to the black background as I wrote with the thread. Then I had to cut away the extra orchid fabric, cutting out the letters. It still wasn't enough, so I cut away some of the black to reveal the muslin underneath which gave the lettering more dimension.
Looking for a video for you in case you don't know what paper piecing is, I realized that I am a freak. All of the videos I found show making a quilt block with no batting, just the paper foundation and the fabric. I like the way I did it, especially for this little banner. If I didn't already have the batting built-in to it, the gem would probably be a UFO right now.
For lots of fun quilt projects and getting to know the quilters behind them, I recommend you check out the Blogger's Quilt Festival happening right now. There is even a few more days for you to enter your own quilt.