Max's Hidden Stars Quilt

Visiting family in August, I saw my nephew had a big empty wall begging for a quilt.  His room colors are blue and I like blue, so I got a quilt kit and a fat quarter bundle of blues by Boundless from Craftsy.  His mom thought he would like a bed topper better than a wall hanging (and it saved me adding the sleeve pocket) so I got to work.  I was on a Half Square Triangle (HST) roll from the previous quilt so this was easy.  The kit had a pattern, but the instructions created a bunch of waste and yielded the squares with bias edges, two fails in my book, and the finished quilt was only 40"x48".  I cut the triangles using the EZ Quilting EZ Angle Ruler to minimize waste and sewed up a bunch of HSTs.  As I was laying out the quilt, I found the pattern too plain, just a bunch of repeating pinwheels and a big Ohio Star.  I wanted to try some other ideas out.

I met Gwen Marston over the summer and was attracted to her improv/liberated style.  I wanted to mix it up a little.  I had a stack of light/dark HSTs made up from the kit contents and some material for the backing, including some glow in the dark constellation fabric.

I started moving them around until I got this.  Much more dynamic and engaging.  There are still 7 or 8 pinwheels and the original Ohio star present.  I quilted it by machine and by hand, following the "trails" from the edges to the Ohio Star points.  I used different color threads in the machine and different colors of perle cotton by hand.  I had to make a half hoop to do the edges and made a round 20" hoop once I had the jigs made.  I made the hoops big because the quilting is linear and covers a long distance.  I will do a tutorial on how I made the hoops. I echoed the Ohio star by hand and also in two squares.  I also added some embroidered/sashiko stars using variegated yellow/gold perle cotton.