Astria: A New Star Quilt Pattern

Hi friends!

Welcome to today’s post on another new star quilt pattern, Astria! 

Astria is the second new starry skies quilt pattern that was designed by me and Tammy Silver of Tamarinis. I love this big quilt!

Astria- the design process for a new star quilt pattern

Astria was also inspired by one of the blocks in our block of the month quilt Luminous. In this quilt, we took a different approach to the design. We wanted to take a block and then make variations of it and see what could happen. 

Can you use one block and tweak it so it looks different? In the end, it was less about making it look different than creating a way for the block to be different; we changed up the sizes, added other elements and then put them all on point.

 

The process for this quilt was similar to Novalie, it involved us emailing back and forth until we had a design we both loved.

And we decided to continue with the color challenge from both Luminous and Novalie; how would the quilt look with both a light background and a dark background? Again, I was tasked with creating the ‘light”, or Dawn, version as that is more in my design aesthetic and the darker version, Dusk, would be Tammy’s.

We stuck to the plan to use fabrics from Island Batiks basics lines- they have solids, and what they call basics, blenders and neutrals. By using these, we weren’t locked into one fabric line that is only around for a short period of time.

My fabrics

A quilt with a light background. I played around with what that could mean other than just a version of white. Island Batik has lots of neutrals I could play with; a solid white, and tone on tone prints that  ranged from white with speckles to a darker cream print.

I thought the quilt looked great in white! But then again, I love me a white quilt!

But, again, I thought this was a great opportunity to try another color that still would be lighter than Tammy’s version. I ended up with a green solid. What a bright and happy color! This quilt makes me smile. It looks like spring!

I paired the green with these pretty pinks, oranges and yellow. Sometimes having an inspiration for your colors helps you to pick them. And obviously, for this quilt, spring was my inspiration!

A new star quilt pattern

This design is  made of 5 blocks. They all start out the same – well the piecing is the same but the sizes are different. And a few we added some subtle color changes just to give it a little more interest.

Then for some of the blocks, we added different elements. Set those blocks on point and ta-da! What a quilt!

The quit is a nice lap size but you could always add borders to make it bigger!

Quilting

For this quilt I again used an all over design. I could have gone with a star design since this is a star quilt. But I wanted something else- more movement and a little bit funky.

I kept the thread more neutral- a green that blended with the top. The quilting adds texture but lets the stars shine!

What color scheme would you use for Astria?

Let me know in the comments!

Be sure to pop over to Tammy’s blog and learn more about her version of Astria! It is so amazing- very bold and dramatic.

Interested in the pattern? Click here.

Next week I will share more about another new pattern of mine using the Painted Blossoms line – Compass!

happy quilting!

Kate