Tori McElwain from The Quilt Patch by Tori
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I had so much fun creating this beautiful pattern!
I wanted something that could fit into the series that I am developing, so I started with a star! This pattern is developed to be charm pack friendly. I have so many charm packs that needed to be used! This beautiful charm pack Aria, by Kate Spain, was calling my name!
The patterns that I write are made to be more like guidelines. I started my business making custom quilts, my customers wanted certain themes on fabrics and I could hardly ever find a good pattern to showcase the specific fabric. I love creating patterns that my customers can be very creative with. I can’t wait to see what you can do with this pattern!
I used the pattern guidelines that I had created (have you noticed the trend in my dark/medium/light pattern guidelines yet?) to pick out the darkest and the lightest fabrics in the charm pack. I went with my gut on the mediums and chose a white-on-white stars fabric for the light. Then came the time for the HST (half-square triangles). Normally, these are very tedious for me, but for this wonderful sample, they were therapeutic! I was so excited to get these done so I could play around with their placement!
My favorite part of every project is getting it up on my design wall and putting it together. I feel my sense of accomplishment in a finished product and seeing all the little pieces come together is so much fun for me!
It took me about an hour to get everything arranged on my wall just the right way. Have you ever found this part difficult? I love it, but it can get frustrating. I sometimes find myself overthinking, having to step away, and then coming back. This arrangement came together easily for me this time. In the pattern, I included a coloring sheet to help with this process. I like to use coloring sheets when I am having trouble picking which fabrics to use. I usually steal my two-year-old's crayons and color in the squares/triangles with the same color (or close to) as the background of the fabrics I want to use. Whether you use a design wall (or table/bed/floor) or the coloring sheet, I can't wait to see what you create!
After getting the pieces up on the wall I realized I had made a mistake! I used my favorite dark fabrics with all my light triangles! I had to figure out a new combination for the 2 dark/medium HST. In the end, it still worked out beautifully! Finished is always better than perfect.
With the top together it was time to pick the backing. I love flannel. It can be hard to work with, but I love the way it feels. I initially wanted to put donuts on the back, but my husband talked me out of that and I went with a light blue flannel I had in my stash. It was a great switch; it shows off the quilting beautifully. (See slide show below!)
The quilting was something I thought about for days. I needed something fun and filling for the negative space (so that it would hang nicely), and, most importantly, highlight the pattern. I chose to echo the stars and fill them and the other HST with an orange peel motif. For the negative space, I chose the clam shells for density and texture. I chose white thread to blend with the background and blue in the stars and the other HST for.....well, just for fun! This was fairly quick work on my domestic machine.
I tried something new with my scrappy version of Follow the Stars! I made scrappy binding! I had about 10 squares left over from my charm pack that I didn’t want to go to waste, so I bought 2 fat quarters of matching fabric and made scrappy binding! I initially tried to line up the scraps with the corners of the quilt, but when I laid it out I liked the way the the randomly placed scrap sections looked. It was I will definitely be using scrappy binding again!
Enjoy the Slide show below!
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Feel free to check out the Follow the Stars fabric pattern here!
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