Winter Star Digital Edge-to-Edge Quilting Design

As so often happens, this design evolved as I was working on it. I didn't imagine it as a holiday-adjacent design at first, but I thought it so closely resembled a poinsettia that I leaned into that theme when naming it. Of course, it doesn't have to be used for Christmas, holiday, or winter-themed quilts, but I think it would work well for them.



The circles positioned between the star shapes made me think of a tufted cushion on a couch or a headboard—so much so that I was THISCLOSE to naming the design Hangin' Tuft. This would have been funny, but it made little sense—as if this had stopped me before.



I also started with just the inside star shape between the circles, but I couldn't leave all that space between the motifs, so I employed some echoing to help fill in the gaps and enhance the curves.





I'm much more happy with the evenly balanced result. Echoing almost always "works" whether you are hand-guiding and need to travel to a different part of the quilt, or in a pantograph design to boost texture.

The Quilt

I'd been wanting to make a quilt in traditional Christmas colors, and when this pattern called Front Street by A Piece of Quiet Quilts came along, I knew it would be a great candidate for it.

I've gotten to know Meghan, the designer behind A Piece of Quiet Quilts, from being part of the Longarm League over the last several years. She is a longarm quilter and a pattern designer/writer.  

What I loved about the pattern was that it allowed me to dig deep into my stash to bring forth green, navy, and red prints, some of which hadn't seen the light of day for 17+ years! You see, we used to have a Ben Franklin store that sold fabric in my town, and well, let's just say that in my mid-20s, I thought I would use A LOT more traditional Benartex fabrics than what actually happened. But I love that I could use them in this Christmas palette! Not including the solid white background fabric, I pulled 30 different prints, which easily mixed the old stuff from my fabric collection with the newer and more modern fabrics.

I love how the pattern was written and how it uses strip piecing for efficiency. I cut the fabrics before I left for a retreat and had no problems following the straightforward directions in an admittedly distracting environment.

I won't admit to needing a break from my beloved star blocks and patterns, but I'm glad I decided on this one. It was nice not having to deal with flying geese or half-square triangle units!

The backing fabric is a holiday print from Ruby Star Society with vinyl records whose sleeves have Christmas trees and stars. It's a fun one! 

The Quilting Details

To execute the pattern as designed, you'll want to stagger or offset every other row at 50% and then close the gap between rows. Do not close the gap so much that the rows are touching. That'll only make it more difficult to align as you progress through the quilt.

There is some backtracking to be aware of, but nothing that makes it challenging to stitch. I tend to use 50-weight thread all of the time for my top thread and 60-weight in the bobbin. I especially like using thin threads like these when I use a design with backtracking. It prevents the double-stitched portions from being too prominent compared to the rest of the design.

For this quilt, I adjusted the size until the circle was 1" in diameter. You could certainly size up or down and be fine.

As always, play the video at the top of the blog post to see the stitch path. 

Here are the sizing specifications for how I set up this quilt using my Intelliquilter (62" x 74" quilt size):

Row height: 4.685"
Gap: -3.123" 
Pattern height: 7.807" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: 50%
Backtracking: some

Here's a look at the included PDF:

If you use Winter Star on a quilt, we'd love it if you used the hashtag #winterstarpanto and tag @longarmleague on Instagram so we can see how you use it! 


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