After finishing Mum’s Garden, I dove straight into more curved piecing exploration. These ideas all started with the pieced stars in the borders of Mum’s Garden:
Additional Piecing
Instead of making four Drunkard’s Path blocks and sewing them together into a block to create the star shape, I used a single piece of fabric for the star. Four curved seams later, and a star block was pieced. The stars for Mum’s Garden finish at 6″. The next thing I wanted to explore was an inset star at the center of four blocks.
Inset Star
I decided to increase the block sizes for these tests. Just imagine that the four outer blocks are 12″ finished pieced star blocks like I showed in the first photograph. With a little modification to the approach to make the star block, this 24″ finished inset star comes together easily. The inset star does require partial seams, but they are really gentle and easy to do!
Sky Full of Stars – Star Fabric
I quickly moved from piecing exploration to wanting to make a larger quilt with the combination of these two blocks. I raided my bin of Carolyn Friedlander prints, selected 17 that worked well together, and I picked out Kona Storm from my solid stash for the background. Each of these prints will become the star at the center of a block.
Sky Full of Stars – First Quadrant Stars
Each quarter of the quilt is comprised of three star blocks and an inset star. This is the first quadrant ready for the inset star piecing; the yarrow Botanics print layered behind the star blocks will become the inset star.
Sky Full of Stars – First Quadrant Inset Star
At this point I was still learning a lot: the best way to press seams, refining my technique, and even getting smarter about the way I pin. Overall, I was really happy with how the first quadrant of the quilt top came together. As a reminder, each quadrant is 24 1/2″ square unfinished and each star is 12 1/2″ unfinished.
Sky Full of Stars – Pieced Quadrants
With all four quadrants pieced, it was time for the final inset star in the center to finish the quilt top.
Sky Full of Stars
With the dark background and lighter prints, I named this design Sky Full of Stars, and am really pleased with how the 48 1/2″ square quilt top came together. I have a pretty detailed quilting plan in place for Sky Full of Stars which will require a lot of thread tying off and burying, but I think it will be worth it!
Sky Full of Stars Piecing Detail
I learned a lot as I worked through piecing Sky Full of Stars, and I will be sharing some tutorials over the next few weeks based on what I’ve learned so far.
Wow! You took a great idea and turned it into a fabulous quilt.
I love a good quilty exploration experience – and these look SO fun, Yvonne! Love where this ended up and can’t wait to see how you finish her up!
So creative! Now I have a challenge to see if I can figure out how this all works. Experimenting with my scraps. I hope your tutorials come out soon.
I really love this!! Will this be a pattern eventually?
Love this. I’ve been playing with curves too but not sure I’m quite ready for your inset stars! I look forward to the tutorial.
You did a Beautiful job on this. I haven’t tried curves, but this is very interesting. Look forward to the tutorials.
Love this! And I really admire your piecing technique and accuracy. Anxious to see more of your quilting plan. At least it isn’t a HUGE quilt!
I am blown away by this quilt top. Your photos of each step are well done. Love the fabric selections. The design is just fantastic and I can tell you took a lot of time to find the best way to do this pattern. I’m looking forward to seeing the quilting and also the forthcoming tutorials.
Love this! And I especially appreciate the way you have detailed your thought process along the way.
Wow! That’s amazing.
What an amazing pattern and fabrics! Looking forward to seeing your quilting designs. The burying knots will all be worth it.
Wow! I can’t even sew one drunkards path correctly, so I am totally in awe of your piecing here. Love the design and am looking forward to your quilting details 🙂 xo Melanie
That’s a quilt with some serious “WOW” factor. Looking forward to seeing what you do with the quilting.
This is AB. SO. LOOT. LEE. fantabulous. Love the name (thanks for the earworm, but it’s okay I love Coldplay.) Can’t wait to see how you quilt it!
This is so impressive. It was fun to watch it all come together. Are you going to add a skinny border of storm so that they float or have the points go right to the binding?
This is exquisite! I love the dark background and your beautiful curves.
It took a minute for this to compute in my brain….I love how you put it all together! Curve piecing is something I’ve only attempted once. I need to have time to play with some new techniques. I’m looking forward to the tutorials you are working on. The quilt turned out quite fabulous, and I’m really excited to see your quilting plan for this!