Tag Archives: Star Quilt

Mill City – Finished

April 10, 2024UncategorizedCotton + Steel Fabric, Cotton and Steel Fabric, Ohio Star Quilt Block, Scrap Quilt, Star Quilt, Tula PinkBrooklyn Quilting Co.

My quest to turn my stack of quilt tops into actual finished quilts continues! I’ve made some good progress the last couple of years and I can check another one off the list with my finished Mill City quilt.

I made this quilt top back in 2017 and shared it at the beginning of 2018. As I’ve said before, some quilts take longer than others. LOL

Every time I pull one of these quilt tops out that I haven’t seen in a while I ask myself, “do I still like this?” The answer for this one is a definite yes.

I still really like the colors and pattern, which is quite simple with a combo of Ohio Star blocks and nine patch squares. This is a scrap quilt but it’s mostly original Cotton + Steel fabric.

BTW, this next picture makes me laugh. It looks like no one is holding the quilt!

The back of this quilt uses a large piece of the much-loved Fairy Dust fabric from Tula Pink’s True Colors collection.

My last blog post was about quilt backs and I mentioned the lack of good extra wide fabric available on the market. The good news is this fabric is available in extra wide. The piece I used obviously is not, as I had to piece the back together, but FYI in case you like it. I believe there are other colorways available, too.

I think I have 2-3 more old(er) quilt tops left to finish. To be clear I do have more that that, but the others are from the last year+ so I don’t count those. They’re practically new!

As always, thanks for reading. I’ll be back here again soon talking quilts.

You’re A Star

June 26, 2023UncategorizedDarling Fabric, Denyse Schmidt, Star QuiltBrooklyn Quilting Co.

Aren’t star quilts the best? I love the many different star blocks available and how they can look classic yet modern at the same time. That’s why I knew I had to use Denyse Schmidt’s Darling collection to make a star quilt.

I love the colors in Darling and I think they look so good with the white background, which is from Windham fabrics.

One of my favorite parts of making this quilt was pairing two fabrics together for each block. None of the blocks repeat, unless I made a mistake and accidently did one block twice, but I think I’m good!

When I started placing the blocks, I was trying to move them around so the colors were somewhat evenly distributed throughout the quilt. It was especially important to me with the yellow – because it’s the only yellow fabric and it really pops – but I also didn’t want it to look too perfect, if that makes sense.

Speaking of perfect, I wasn’t a stickler for the stripes in my fabric going the same way. If you look closely, you can see the striped fabric in the stars goes different directions. I know this kind of thing would bug a lot of quilters, but I have a different take.

If you go to quilt museums or quilt shows that have antique quilts, they are often meticulous and perfect. I love that! But I also love when I find old quilts at an antique store or a quilt someone’s grandma passed down to them and they aren’t as perfect looking. Those quilts are equally as beautiful to me and that’s how I like to quilt.

One last note on this quilt. It used to be smaller! I ran out of white fabric and was going to let it go and just let it be a smaller quilt, but I sat on it for a while and I really felt like it needed to be bigger, so I got more white fabric.

It was the right call.

Star Rush

September 25, 2019UncategorizedHeather Ross Briar Rose, Heather Ross Fabric, Star QuiltBrooklyn Quilting Co.

Mark this day in history. I made a red quilt. Or red(ish) quilt. It’s not totally red, but close. This is noteworthy because I’m not into red. It’s not my color. I don’t wear red, I don’t decorate with red, and I use it very sparingly in my quilts. I know a lot of people love it; I just don’t. But once in a while you have to get out of your color comfort zone, and that’s what I did.

I have to start by saying I’m not 100 percent into this quilt. I think I missed the mark just a bit on my fabric selection. I wanted to use up some scrap fabric and use what I had in my stash, but (shocking!!!) I don’t have a lot of red fabric. And my lack of red fabric kind of came back to bite me, but I didn’t realize it until the quilt was pieced together, and I was not going to start over.

Notice the darker red points on the stars? Not all of them are as dark as they should be and don’t stand out enough as the corner star pieces. In a few of them the red fabric is just a bit too light and it doesn’t define the star points enough, in my opinion.

The fabric I do think I got very right is the strawberry background fabric. It is the special reprint of the Heather Ross strawberries from her Briar Rose collection. Even though it’s red, I could use those strawberries all day every day. Love them.

My feeling with this quilt is that, it is what it is. I don’t hate it by any means, it’s just not 100 percent there. Close, but not quite. More importantly, it’s a lesson learned that in the future I need to define those star points with darker fabric!