It’s All Up To You

April is a free month, “any size, any theme, any technique”, for the Island Batik Ambassadors. We are to “express our creativity without guidelines.” I can’t wait to see what my fellow Ambassadors come up with! My mind drifted to some of my students wanting to learn to use the Studio 180 Design’s Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star.

I used the beautiful, Jewel Quest Layer Cake, designed by Kathy Engle for Nan Baker of Purrfect Spots. The precuts should be available in quilt shops now with the yardage being shipped in May. The colors are so rich and gorgeous, and my favorite colors to work with, so this month was a pure delight! For my background fabric, I used Almond Neutral.

EQ8 was used to design my table runner. My design calls for two sizes of the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star: four 5″, and six 3″. Since my fabric squares were 10″, I had to cut two strips to get enough diamonds for the 5″ size, but one was adequate for the 3″ Lemoyne Star.

I paired my fabrics to use as many fabrics as I could of the fabric collection. That’s what I love about using precuts: you get the entire collection. If you want variety in your quilts, this is a way to get it.

Star strips are sewn to background stips, layered, then cut at a 45° angle the same width as the star strips. The final step is to cut off the tips.

Once you sew your star (adding the tips you cut off onto the side), trim your unit using the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star tool. Then you will have perfectly sized units that will fit together.

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Join your units and trim down the outside of the block with your Tucker Trimmer; it’s amazing how precise your star block will be – all points with 1/4″ seam around them.

I used background fillers to complete my table runner, leaving lots of room for free motion quilting.

For my border, I cut 2 1/2 ” squares using my AccuGo!; that made perfect 2 1/2″ squares extremely fast.

All that was left was the quilting, and that is the best part to me. I used Aurifil thread colors #2309 for the background and #2520 for the stars and border.

Disclosure: The fabrics, thread, cutter, and needles were generously supplied by the following companies:

Island Batik

Aurifil

Accuquilt

Schmetz Needles