Exploding Star String Quilt

For a new apartment and a new chapter in life – this string quilt is for my son and his girlfriend. I love the jewel tones and graphic exploding star block. As with most string quilts, I sewed various width strips together to form strip sets. Then cut the strip sets into triangles, and sewed two triangles together to make the half square triangle blocks. I had to handle the triangles gingerly – all those bias edges! I sprayed the blocks with heavy starch to help minimize the stretch – and since I washed the quilt after it was finished, there’s no need to worry the starch will attract unwanted critters to eat holes in all my hard work!

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I also made some Montana-appropriate throw pillows – lots of deer and bear out there! And the bobcat is the mascot of their alma mater, Montana State University – so of course I had to make that one! The patterns for the deer and bear are by Elizabeth Hartman and the bobcat is by Sew Fresh Quilts. Both are great designers – straight forward construction and no paper piecing, I highly recommend their patterns.

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For the quilting, I did all over feathered spirals in the white areas, and some leaf spirals in the colored areas. My son is an environmentalist, so I used “Dream Green” batting from Quilter’s Dream, which is batting made using 100% recycled plastic bottles – this queen size batting kept 20 plastic bottles from the land fill. I often use this batting – it quilts beautifully and washes quite well with very little shrinkage.

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Here’s a few pictures of the back – I generally try to use the same color and type of thread in the top and the bobbin, which you can see here. This makes any minor tension issues much less noticeable on the front of the quilt.

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Thanks to one of our furry friends for all the help piecing strip sets – what’s a quilt without a little cat or dog hair??

Thanks for reading my blog, and Happy Quilting!

Ann