Star Light Star Bright Challenge with Island Batik

The August challenge in the Island Batik ambassador program (for half of the ambassadors, the others participate in the Beat the Heat blog hop) was to create a quilt using any star quilt block pattern. The only requirement was that the quilt had to be lap size or larger.

The first idea that popped into my head was to make BRIGHT stars, and I knew I had the right batiks for that in my stash. In last years first ambassador box I got a bundle of Southern Blooms that I used for two different challenges, in May 2018 and June 2019 . These are bright, rainbow colors with gorgeous butterflies in many of the prints.

I still had enough of these batiks for the center squares of the Friendship Stars. For the star petals I used Island Batik foundations and stash builder rolls. I used 20 different prints from Southern Blooms, and 20 different prints for the star petals. I love it when I can use fabrics from my stash to make new quilts, I hardly ever throw away leftover fabrics!

In addition I used solid white batik for the background and solid grey for the diamonds in between the stars. The design is based on a picture I saw at the Internet.

All the blocks were cut using my Accuquilt Go! fabric cutter, and that is a real time saver! The squares and HSTs are 4" finished.

The piecing and quilting is done with Aurifil 50wt #2024. Walking foot quilting makes up the main design, while I made a "string of pearls", or circles of different sizes in FMQ, in stripes crossing the quilt.

I used Hobbs Heirloom Cotton Batting with Scrim in the quilt sandwich

The finished quilt dimension is 48" x 60".

I used a fun print from Ikea for the backing. The binding is black solid batik.

The quilting is easily visible here where the quilt is hanging over the porch wall.

Today was a beautiful day for a photo shoot, and I brought the quilt with me to a nearby lake.

The sun shining through the quilt showing off the fun print on the back. The sun rays glittering in the lake creates a perfect setting!

The wind isn't always cooperating!

Ready for take-off! Is this the Flying Carpet?

A glorious late-summer day by the lake!


The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik.