The Star Explodes Further

When I last left you the exploding star quilt as at this point…..

Now I had to figure out what to do next!! I felt that the duller colors from the inside star needed to be repeated in the outer part of the quilt but how was I going to do that?

I could add borders…..

NO!!!

I could alternate the colors in these borders…..

Um…..nope!!

I can extend the “baby blocks” out further…..

That’s a little too much!!!

I can add smaller stars…..

Hmmmm……that has possibilities!!!

So, I made a few small stars…..

Added strips to make it one piece….

…..and started laying it out…..

I think that I am going to like this!!!

Let’s Start Piecing

After the previous post’s design ideas, it was time to start piecing….my favorite part of the process!!

Remember that I had three different colorways and decided to work on one at a time.

The first step was to sew the strips together, always placing the “periwinkle” and “rose” fabrics on the outside and the “clay” fabric in the middle.

I absolutely LOVE sewing long strips like this. My fingers just float over the fabric as it flies under the needle….

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…..and my mind has time to explore all sorts of things. Although let’s be honest, I am mostly thinking about my next quilt!!

The problem with adding a triangle to these strips is that there can be a lot of wasted fabric so I invented a way to solve that!!

I figured out how much fabric it took to cut two units and sub-cut my strip sets into those lengths….

I then sewed one triangle to each end of the strip, alternating sides….

I trimmed each triangle shape to include the strips…..

The end result was a small amount of wasted fabric…..

….and two sets of strip triangles….

Note that there are two distinct sets of triangles.

It was then easy to piece them all together, ending up with 6 whirlwind squares…..

Now to repeat the process for the next two color sets!!!

Keep watching for more…..