Stars of the City: A New Block of the Month Pattern
- vafibrearts
- Sep 12, 2023
- 4 min read
Hello Friends and Welcome!
This week, I'm excited to announce the beginning of this year's block of the month quilt along!
The pattern for this year is an original design entitled Stars of the City! It features a variety of star inspired blocks, curve-pieced drunkard's path units, and lots of negative space for unique quilted motifs!
There are many ways to make this pattern your own; through colour selection, quilt size, block arrangement, and any all the other personal touches each of us puts into our quilts! There is even a straight line piecing alternative for the drunkard's path border!
I look forward to seeing how each and every one of you adapts this pattern to your own style!
Stars of the City Quilt Reveal
I've been sharing pictures of small pieces of this quilt all Summer while working on the sample, so I'm sure many of you can already guess how it might look, but I'm thrilled to finally share the full quilt!
This sample is still a work in progress. I'm slowly working my way through the quilting, but it feels so much like a finished quilt already!
As you can probably tell from the name, this quilt was very celestial-inspired. I wanted to show off some of the many different ways star blocks can be pieced, but ended up putting an original twist on many of them through the use of an eight colour sunset gradient!
And I love the way it turned out! This particular gradient creates some beautiful, glowy depth in the blocks, which I feel is greatly enhanced by the texture of the hand quilting!
I'm really looking forward to finishing this sample quilt and can't wait to make another one along with all of you! Let's get started!
Fabric Selection
The first month of this project is focused on fabric selection, this includes choosing a finished quilt size, planning the colour scheme, and acquiring the necessary materials.
Stars of the City is available in four sizes, each with a slightly different block layout. Make note of which size you'll be making as this will affect how many blocks you'll make each month.
The smallest size is the rectangular throw, which finishes at 48" x 66". It has the densest configuration of blocks and the least amount of background fabric.
For anyone in my guild, this is the preferred size for CORE quilt donations, so if you'd like to make a quilt to donate back to the community, this is the size for you!
The next size is the square throw, which is the size of the sample quilt shown earlier. It finishes at 67" x 68", so not perfectly square, but still close.
I personally love square quilts, so I really enjoyed putting this one together!
The third size option is the extra long twin, also known as twin XL. It finishes at 72" x 100", which may be a little long for an average twin sized bed, but that just means there's more quilt to love!
I didn't intentionally choose to make this size extra long, it just worked out this way with the size of the blocks, but as someone who's tall, I do love a quilt that covers my feet!
The final size for the Stars of the City pattern is the queen, which finishes at 104" x 108". Another almost square quilt and the only one with blocks touching just two sides!
Once you've picked a size for your quilt, you can move on to selecting colours!
Stars of the City uses an eight colour scheme and was drafted to use a gradient, meaning the colours transition slowly from one to the next. Placing a very light colour towards the block centre and dark colours towards the edges was how I achieved the glowing effect in my original design!
There are many different ways to make a gradient; it could be monochrome or multicoloured, bold and contrasty or very subtle. You could even employ multiple different gradients to create some variety!
But just because I used a gradient doesn't mean you need to use one too. Choose any eight different colours or repeat some of the same colours to make your quilt your own way!
As for acquiring materials, that's something you'll need to do without me. Take a visit to your favourite quilt store, in person or online, and select the solids or prints that you feel best fit the quilt that you want to make!
I would advise choosing small prints or solids for the accent fabrics as the pieces used will be relatively small. If you'd like to use large print fabrics, save those for the background where the pieces will be big enough to show off the print. Or disregard my advice and try something different, I can't wait to see how it turns out!
For the full list of fabric quantities, a colouring sheet to test your own colour schemes, and a few additional notes about the pattern, download the PDF instructions below!
All further instructions for the Stars of the City BoM will be available here on the blog on the first Tuesday of every month. The quilt along will run starting today until Spring 2024!
Friends, I am so excited to be starting another BoM quilt along with all of you! I hope this year's pattern offers some exciting challenges, interesting new techniques, and many hours of peaceful piecing for each of you!
If you have any questions along the way, please don't hesitate to reach out; I'm always happy to answer those in the comments or privately via email. And once you've selected your fabric for this project, I'd love to see it! Please share photos in the comments below or by tagging me on Instagram!
I can't wait to see what beautiful quilts we'll create together!
Oh this is delightful! I haven't done a block of the month sorta quilt but I have been so interested in learning drunkards path and I think this might get me into it!