Thursday, March 12, 2020

Star Crossing QAL: Week 1

Welcome to Week 1 of the Star Crossing QAL!
I'm so glad you've decided to join the fun!
If you still need to purchase the pattern, you can find it here



Week 1 is all about fabric selection. 
Sometimes I design a quilt with fabrics in mind, and sometimes I design a quilt and then find the perfect fabric. When I saw these rainbow prints (Over the Rainbow by Ampersand Design Studio) from Paintbrush Studio Fabrics, I was smitten. I knew they'd work perfectly with my Star Crossing design. 

Sidenote: Isn't that selvedge adorable?!

I started with the prints--I knew where the stripe would go, but needed to figure out spots for the large and small rainbows and the dots. I really wanted to use the tiny rainbow stripe on the quilt front, but it was too busy for a background and didn't have enough contrast for the stars. So it became the backing. 



Next came selecting the solids for the medium and small stars. I passed on blue, since already had a blue in the dot fabric. I chose four main rainbow colors featured in the prints. I knew they'd pop against the white background, and I liked that they were two sets of complementary colors. I paired them up like that in the design as well--the purple and yellow are adjacent to each other, as are the red and green--for maximum pop. 
Painter's Palette Solids: Lipstick 121-066, Lemon Ice 121-087, Jade 121-039, Purple 121-047


A suggestion about background fabric choices: Consider carefully if you want to use a directional fabric. If you're using a solid or a non-directional print, there's no extra thinking required. If you choose a directional print, you have two options: 1) ignore the directionality (works well with something like at newspaper-style text print), or 2) do careful cutting to keep your fabric "face up." I'll talk more about this during cutting next week, but i wanted to point it out this week. 



Here's my completed fabric selection:




What fabrics will you choose? 
Leave a comment below or post on IG using:
 @lisaerin1121
 #starcrossingquiltalong 
#starcrossingweek1





Quilt Along schedule:
March 12: Fabric selection
March 18: Cutting
March 25: Small and medium stars
April 2: Center star and assembly (I can't promise there won't be some April Fool's jokes...)
April 9: Machine quilting
April 22: Binding


The downloadable version of the Star Crossing pattern is on sale in my Etsy shop, so grab your copy today!



Purchase the pattern (currently 20% off!) here.

*Bring a friend deal: Get a friend to sign up for the QAL and purchase the pattern, and you'll receive 20% off an additional pattern of your choice! 
Simply email me your friend's name and I'll email you the coupon.

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In addition, Pam and Diane, the lovely ladies at Piece, Love and Quilting, are offering a special deal to QAL participants:
25% off computerized edge to edge long arm quilting 
(including batting) for Star Crossing quilts

Contact them via FB or IG to take advantage of this discount!


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Over the Rainbow fabrics
If you'd like to use the same fabrics, here are some shops carrying them (please contact me if you know of any others and I'll add them in!):

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