Modified Night Sky

Uncategorized, , ,

My third big quilt! With the puffy batting I mentioned in the rainbow bargello post. This quilt is based on the MSQC “Night Sky” pattern, but I changed the dimensions a bit to make it rectangular and added more borders.

Taped up and planned on the wall

I bought two layer cakes (10″x10″ squares), one in Black Beauty Batik (hand printed high thread count cotton) and one in this whimsical Feather and Flora line from Studio E, and the backing is the Wildflower Toss Eggplant. I had bought the batiks for a different project that I didn’t end up doing, but I think they look great here. I love the black background to go with the stars 🙂 plus I was able to use the magic 8 method that grants you 8 HSTs from two 10″ squares and I didn’t have to cut as much fabric.

I made all the HSTs and squared them to 4.5″. I decided I wanted the insides of the star to be a different pattern than the outside points, like in the original pattern, and then the borders would be scrappy and random. I made a few stars and then figured out how many I would need to make the quilt big enough for my bed. It didn’t quite work, but I went with a general design that would be close enough and then I could add borders to increase the dimensions.

Top without borders – a bit more chaotic than I planned, but I really like it.

It kind of reminds me of ripples on a smooth pond, if you had dropped the stars in. I really wanted to take advantage of the new puffy batting I got, so I decided to quilt it in horizontal lines with my walking foot, which ended up being stitch in the ditch.

  • Working on SITD – on the right you see the folded up quilt that I will move to next
  • All done! I like it much better with the border

Time check: 5.5 hours to:

  • Cut fabric for binding (9) 2.5″ strips
  • Cut fabric for border (6) 4.5″ strips
  • Sew binding together to make one long strip
  • Press binding seams open
  • Iron binding in half hotdog style
  • Make HSTs for border and sew into border at correct measurements
  • Sew entire border on
  • Iron backing fabric
  • Cut backing fabric and sew middle seam
  • Iron backing seam and quilt top border seams
  • Baste quilt sandwich
  • Stitch in the ditch on all horizontal gridlines using walking foot
  • Sew binding to back
  • Sew binding to front
~5min, 16X: laying out quilt sandwich and starting to baste
Real time: closing safety pins with Kwik Klip
~1min, 4X: stitching in the ditch with walking foot.
On the right, see the folded up quilt in the throat.
~2min, 8X: putting binding on and turning corner (sealing sandwich together)
On the bed 🙂 the rainbow bargello is on the couch now

Project completed September 14, 2019.

Leave a comment