I cracked up finding photos I have of Throwing Stars. This little quilt really gets around π There’s photos of its prestudio starts in the little sewing room in the house and Birch Bay, as a quilt top on Vashon Island, and all finished at the front and back of our house, some during a snowstorm, Whidbey Island, Quiltcon…
Lately, you’ll mostly find it keeping me company on my couch. For always thinking it was oddly sized, it’s become my go-to lounging quilt since the day I laid it upon my lap to bind it.
One place it hasn’t been in all this time is here. Time to share.
I love scrap quilts. Scraps are an opportunity to play with ideas. They’re almost magical in the way that they bring back memories of past projects, people and special or not so special times. I even love watching people dig through the studio’s scrap bins to see the look of joy it brings to their faces. I feel the same. Sometimes they’ve found just the right scrap for their master plan, or a bit of a fabric they’ve always admired.
Those are the kind of scraps that made it into the improv triangles in this quilt along with a couple colors of yarn dyed Essex linen as background. The Essex, or something similar like a Carolina Chambray with all that soft texture really allows scraps to show their true character, giving them all a place to shine.
I sorta merged the block size system from my Magic Numbers Workshop (online tutorial here) with the pieced improv triangle (you can find the triangle technique in Quilting Modern).
I placed my blocks into the throwing stars shape as a layout example. I think I had to stop at about 12 block examples for the workshop, but I certainly could have continued as the layout ideas just wouldn’t stop.
Above are just a few block layouts repeated in the Layout app. The designs a few of my friends and I came up with during a little workshop run through were, like I said, endless. Repeating the block designs certainly isn’t necessarily and could create an improvisational design.
Of course, playing with color can only add another layer.
I debated going with swirls on this one with the quilting, but didn’t diverge from my straight lines. Initially I was a little unhappy with some of the quilting creating puffiness possibly due to poor basting, but as they say, it all came out in the wash.
I pulled from the stash for a backing. That might never end.
I’m guessing this won’t be the last example you’ll see from me merging these two techniques and you’ll for sure be seeing this class on-line in the next year, so hope to ‘meet you’ there;)