I’ve made some good progress on my Economy Star quilt! Would you like to see how it has evolved?

As of my last post, I was cutting and placing all the red squares on my design wall. Each one will become the center of a star. Next I placed the background squares, delineating a few different areas of background color.

My test batch of stars had busy cream backgrounds (top right). I’ve surrounded that area with peach background tones. The peach background fabrics will flow around the whole perimeter of the quilt too, forming the main background color theme.

In the center of the quilt there are two highlight areas: a lavender background area and a bright white background area. I hope that this subtle color-blocking in the background will give the quilt some sparkle. A simpler one-color background would have also been fine, but this color-blocking approach keeps me more creatively engaged.

Oh how good it felt when I had put every last piece of background fabric up on my design wall! So many pieces. So much fun! I only worried that a breeze would flow through my room and blow all that work away, haha. Fortunately, we’ve been spared so far.

Economy Stars are like Sawtooth Stars, but with an interlocking patchwork style. As such, Economy Stars totally save on fabric and time. They eliminate a LOT of seams. That makes them a really good choice for a small scale star, like mine.

One drawback though, is that Economy Stars must be sewn in batches like this. The fact that the edges interlock means that each batch never feels complete. I have to admit, that can feel a bit anti-climatic. On the other hand, it keeps the ball rolling!