Batik Stars and Bonus HSTs

Note, some of the fabrics in this post were given to me by Island Batik as part of their ambassador program.

I've been working on my project for the June Island Batik ambassador program. The challenge this month is to create a modern batik quilt, so I'm making a throw quilt with lots of negative space and 20 9" blocks.

The top is actually finished now, but I don't have a good picture or it, so I'll save that for another day. I'm hoping to get it basted soon because I can't wait to get to the quilting, as usual 😊

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again...I love star blocks! For this quilt, I've chosen two stars, the friendship star and the Ohio star. I've made them with fabrics from Island Batik's Elementz line and the background is one of their foundation neutrals. It's called Buttermilk and I love it.

Here are the Ohio stars.

And the friendship stars.

This palette feels so summery to me, which was quite funny as I was putting the quilt top together on Sunday while it SNOWED. It was crazy! It snowed all day, but thankfully the snow all melted again on Monday.

While sewing the stars and assembling the quilt top, I used the bonus HSTs from my Murrina quilt as leaders and enders. By the time the quilt top was finished, I had a 12" block put together.

I was very amused by how much the rows shrank when I pieced the blocks together. It's hard to imagine that sewing the rows together will turn this back into a square, isn't it?

But it did!

 Here's a close up of the center of the block. What's the smallest scrappy bit you can see? Keep in mind, each HST finishes at only 1" square, so those small bits are really, really small!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to finish the block as a mini quilt to add to my mini wall, but for now it's waiting its turn while I work on other things. I hope to get back to it over our summer break, which is thankfully only 3 1/2 weeks away. Of course, I have a whole list of other things I'd like to get to over the break too, so hopefully the summer lull won't keep me from sewing this year!

I'm still waiting for Blogger to fix the comment notification problem (they're working on it, I hear, so that's a start), so if you comment on this post please know that I am reading all of the comments, even if I'm not able to reply to them easily right now. I'm really hoping Blogger gets it resolved soon!