Lucky Stars Quilt Top Checked Off

What a fun quilt to make! And it went together really quickly. Here’s the original post on this quilt.

That’s Bender in the photo. He thinks quilting is really boring. So many things he’d rather be doing!

A friend of mine just made this quilt and even gave me her scraps to use in my quilt. So our quilts are almost the same quilt! I did add a bunch of batik scraps I had left over from making pouches.

I really love this little quilt. I just love the wonderful variety of batiks. There are some fabrics that only appear in one piece! It really is scrappy. I should count them, but I’m pretty sure there are more than 40 different fabrics in this quilt.

My friend struggled with her blocks on the design wall. She had sewn the 15 inch blocks together, and then moved the entire block to arrange the colors.

I decided to go about it differently to see if it was easier to arrange all the colors. I sewed all the stars first and tossed them up on the design wall and moved them around until they were arranged the way I wanted them.  I left enough space to add the larger strips to the design wall.

Then I added the larger strips to two ends of each block, on the top and bottom of one block, then on the sides of the next block, which is how they would be arranged in the final lay out. Once I had the colors arranged the way I wanted, I sewed the strips to either end of the stars, and put them back on my design wall in the same place.

A friend commented that at this stage, they look like a collection of flags from around the world.

The next step was to sew all the smaller strips together in sets of two. Then I added these pieces to the design wall.

And I was right… this method made the layout much easier. Rather than having to move an entire block and try to get the colors to work, I could simply take one of the two-strip pieces and move it to another location.

Once I had all the strips placed on the design wall, I shared a photo with my friends and even sent it to my long arm quilter. She immediately noticed something that needed to be moved. This is the photo she texted back to me.

She said that those two vertical yellow strips really stood out to her.

So to fix them, all I had to do was rotate the center portion of that block and it took care of the issue… and it didn’t create any additional issues.

I will definitely put additional quilts on this pattern together the same way. And I already have another one in the planning stage.

Here’s the backing I’m going to use on this quilt. I saw it in a really fun little store in Bountiful, Utah, that has a really amazing selection of batiks. Every time I go there I buy way too many pieces of fabric. And when I saw this fabric, I immediately wanted it for the back of this quilt.

Boy… that’s a terrible photo!

Now I need to decide what I’ll use for the binding. I’m thinking something that plays with the oranges and reds in the quilt backing. Pretty sure there isn’t anything in my stash so I’m just going to have to go shopping!