Welcome to Dancing Stars quilt along! We will take it nice and easy this week. Jut gather up the fabrics you plan to use and do whatever prep you normally do (prewash, starch etc. if so desired.) The quilt pattern includes 3 sizes and it calls for fat quarters, but this patten works very well with scraps, or fewer colors, too.
- Click here to get the Dancing Stars Quilt Pattern – Digital PDF
- Click here to get the Dancing Stars Quilt Pattern – Printed Hardcopy
Colorway Ideas for Dancing Stars
When choosing colors, think about complementary pairs of fabrics that will work well together, such as black and white, shown above or think in terms of value like light and dark. In order for this quilt to work successfully, you want to clearly see the boundary between each star block and it’s background color. Scraps will work well as long as you sort them together into pairs that contrast.
I used a fat quarter bundle of Confetti Cotton Solids in black, white and grey for my first go-round.
In my black/white/grey version I used 12 fat quarters – half of them were white to light grey, and the other half went from medium gray to black. However, I did NOT try to make any sort of pattern with the placement of the black and white in the quilt. I made sure each individual block contrasted well and then I placed the star blocks rather randomly. However, I did do a checkerboard of dark-light-dark in the border to unify the design.
Each fat quarter will be enough fabric for one star, and one background. So you can make two opposite stars with a positive/negative vibe, OR you can mix up the stars and backgrounds so that no two fabrics are paired together more than once.
For my Americana version of Dancing Stars, I had less than a fat eighth of each fabric to work with (1/2 of a fat quarter). So I chose 12 different red and blue fabrics for darks and 12 different cream batiks for lights. In the color layout above, I made sure that every other star was a contrast to its neighbor (light-dark-light) and I repeated that pattern in the stars, too. I didn’t use any of the lighter fabrics in the border like I did for the black/white version. Instead I only cut those squares from red and blue fabrics. In fact there ARE a few fabrics in the border that aren’t in the stars. Sometimes, limitations can lead to creative outcomes!
These are the fabric scraps I had to work with. Here’s a sneaky hint: I made this batik version of Dancing Stars to test out Riley Blake batiks. That’s because I’m going to design a line of modern batik fabrics in the future and wanted to make sure I was happy with their performance. The answer was yes – so stay tuned!!
Here are some other color combinations I came up with. Just remember, The sky is the limit when it comes to your creativity so be fearless when it comes to choosing colors. After all, you make want to make this quilt more than once, like I did!!
Share Your Work in Progress!
Each week as you work on this quilt, I would love to see how you are doing and cheer you on. It’s important to note that everyone will work at their own pace, so please don’t ever feel left behind. These blog posts will stay up indefinitely so you can sew on your own schedule. Even if you make it much later in the future I still want to see!
Click here to share your work in progress in my Christa Quilts Group on Facebook.
Next week it’s time to cut everything out, so if you haven’t already done so, be sure to grab a copy of the Dancing Stars quilt pattern to follow along!
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