My Barnstar Sampler

So I figured since I've mentioned it a few times, and because it's such a large project, I think my Barnstar Sampler Quilt should get it's own post. About a year ago, I saw a few people in one of the groups I'm in post pictures of their progress on their Barnstar Samplers. Unbeknownst to me, there was a sew a long for this quilt going on in 2023. But I fell in love with this pattern and knew I wanted to make it using 30s prints. But not having the money in my quilting budget to buy the insane amount of fabric I needed for the pattern, I added the book and a few of Lori Holt's fat quarter bundles to my wish list. And my wonderful partner bought the book and a fat quarter bundle for me for Christmas that year. He even bought me a few neutral bundles from her lines to go with it (he does listen when I go on and on, definitely a keeper!). 

The top is made up mostly from Lori's Bee Vintage line, but I think there are some of her Bee Calicos in there as well. I also added to the backgrounds he bought me with some that I had in my stash. So if you can believe it, once all the Christmas celebrations were over, and we were back home, I started sorting fabric and assigning numbers to each print based on the pattern. 

The next day I started cutting and sewing. I did end up ordering a quarter yard of two different dark brown prints because that's all I was short on between all the fabric I had gotten, so I started by making block 2 first. I probably would've finished this quilt top sooner, but I was changing and adjusting things as I went. The author of the pattern is a big fan of sew and flips. I'm not. Sometimes it feels wasteful to me, so I made the flying geese, half square triangles, and square in a square blocks the way I like making them. So there were slight adjustments to the pattern. I find I get more accurate blocks this way, so I'll continue doing it my way. This might account for why I had so much fabric leftover after the quilt was done, but it might also just have been extra fabric built into the pattern to account for miscuts. But I would also like to add, I made my quilt larger than the pattern by adding an extra row of 8" blocks and I still had extra. 

My leftover print fabric after the top was done.

It took me about a month and a half to piece the top. I had a week off of work after Christmas and that made a big dent in the large blocks and I worked on the blocks after work. Some days I would pick fabric for a block and cut it and the next day I would sew them together. By the time I was making the last few 8" blocks, I stopped paying attention to the colors the book suggested and just looked at my quilt top to see what colors would look good in that spot. I think I even moved some of the larger 16" blocks around so the colors were more evenly spread out. 

I knew when I originally saw the pattern that this was going to be one that I would hand quilt. I enjoy the quilting process, but my free motion skills are not up to taking on this large and complex of a quilt. Not only that, I was about to finish my then current hand quilting project and was in need of another one. 

To tie it all together, I decided to do a cross hatch on the background of all the blocks and outline each star. Each star would have it's own quilting design. A sampler of quilting patterns as well as a sampler of quilt blocks. I kept the backing fabric plain, Kona Snow, so that the quilting would show up and if I ever wanted, it could be flipped over and used as a whole cloth quilt (though I doubt I'll ever fall out of love with the top). I'm using Hobbs Tuscany Wool batting for this and it is such a dream to hand quilt with. It shows the texture of the quilting so well and my needle just glides through it. For thread I'm using 12 different colors of Gutermann Hand Quilting thread and matching the thread color to the fabric on the front. It means the quilting doesn't really stand out a lot on the front, but I know from experience, once washed, it will show the patterns I chose really well. 

So how close am I to actually finishing this by Thanksgiving? Well, the background crosshatching is completed. That felt like quite the milestone. I have also quilted the stars around the outside. The 16" an 24" blocks I only quilted about 8" in, because I wanted to sew the binding on because the wing nut on my hoop kept getting caught in the extra batting around the edge. So I made a scrappy binding and it is sewn on except for one corner where I'll be attaching a label once it's done. That's just clipped in place for the moment. I also added a hanging sleeve because I want to enter it in my local guild's quilt show in 2 years when they have the next one. At this point, I have it figured out that I need to quilt six 8" blocks a week to finish it by Thanksgiving, and that accounts for taking a week off for a vacation. Some of the blocks are going to be more intense to quilt and getting 6 done in a week is going to be all I can get done. But then there are also other blocks that I could probably get 6 done in a few days. I'm OK with getting ahead of schedule!

I've also noticed that when I finish a 24" block, it feels like I've gotten so much done. More so than if I finish 2 16" blocks. I don't understand it, but I should finish one more 24" block this week and that will leave me with one more to do. I might quilt a few smaller blocks before tackling that one because I've also found that I don't want to quilt the same block back to back if I can help it. 

So that's where I am with my Barnstar Quilt. In other quilting, I have all but the borders made for the baby quilt for my brother's friend. And when I asked him if he wanted anything specific on the label, he mentioned a verse, but also asked if I could make a quilt for a baby boy another one of his friends is having. 

So in order to fit all this in by Thanksgiving with a week long vacation in there coming up in a few weeks, I ordered 2 charm packs and am going to make another Oh My Stars by Pat Sloan. Mostly because I know I can make one start to finish in less than a week and I can deliver both to him at the same time. I'm still in the block arranging phase, which is a little hard with this line because there are only 9 different prints in 5 colors and I'm using the orange blocks for the stars. I still need to get border fabric for this one, I'm thinking a dark teal which should allow for the orange stars on the border to still pop.

Happy quilting!