Kokomo (Stars Upon Star) Assembly

And now to Part C of my posts on Kokomo (Stars Upon Stars)

C. Assembly

I chose to hand piece my quilt because I knew it would give the me level of accuracy and finishing that I was after.  And I won an award for "Best Piecing" in our guild's exhibition so it worked!

I English Paper Pieced my La Passacaglia quilt, but now I much prefer hand piecing with no papers because it's easier on my hands.  

I was fortunate to stumble across a rubber stamp set for hand piecing Stars Upon Stars made by Jeanneke.  The stamps result in each piece being slightly bigger that in Laundry Basket Quilt's pattern, but the finished look is the same.  

EDIT: the stamps are back in stock in Jeanneke’s Etsy shop 🎉🎉🎉🎉

There's a lot of Y seams in this quilt so it's perfect for hand piecing.  I do find that I have much more control when I hand piece. There's no lost points on my stars when I'm hand piecing. 

I made a few videos about how I hand piece the 8 pointed stars here on my YouTube channel. 

I use Aurifil 50wt in a neutral grey and a very fine milliners needle.   

If you've got time and just want to enjoy the process I really do recommend hand piecing or English Paper Piecing to get a high level of accuracy with this gorgeous quilt. 

As I chose the fabrics for each block I bagged them up and they became a very portable travel project for quilt a few years.  

When hand piecing the diamonds I started on one side and worked down the vertical rows.  It helped to layout the pieces so I didn't accidentally pick up the wrong one.  

Once the diamonds were finished I turned them over and pressed them carefully so they would sit flat and nest nicely into the next piece. I used Flatter to help the blocks sit flat. 

I experimented with each set of diamonds to see which way up I preferred them.  And then I tested out my outside stars to see which colour would work best with the centre star.  

auditioning the external stars for each block

Once I had made a complete block I set it aside and didn't join any of them up until I could lay out the whole quilt and check the colour placement. 

Considering how they're going to work together

Back in December 2016 I tried Edyta Sitar's (Laundry Basket Quilts) method in her Stars Upon Stars pattern . Even following the directions closely, and using all of the available tips online, I still couldn't get the seams to meet nicely, so hand piecing was the perfect solution for me. 

These were the test fabrics only

Lollie Wheels

This week I decided to start something new.  I saw a cute quilt in the background of Jen Kingwell's booth at Quilt Market and I thought about some of her fabrics that I had in my stash.  

This clever version of a Pin Wheel quilt is made by cutting Jen Kingwell's Lollies fabric in a particular manner. Jen offers a free pattern to make in on her Amitie Textiles website - it's called Lollie Wheels. Fortunately I had a few pieces of the first run of Lollies in my stash so I decided to give it a try. 

 

width of fabric of Lollies

More of the colourways that I just happened to have

I was very pleased with my first blocks so I kept going and now I'm on a roll.  

Maybe I'll be able to report back next week with even more progress.  The blocks are 8" finished so I'm aiming for 49 of them to make the quilt 56" x 56" as per the pattern.