I have a number of really great quilt shops in my area. I’m fortunate that I get to quilt many of the tops created in classes that they offer. This quilt top was made in a mystery quilt sampler course over at the Smocking Shop.
I’ve never participated in a mystery quilt but I think I would have liked this one.

There are so many elements to this quilt that I’ll be posting it in two parts so you can get a good look at everything going on in this top.

I’ve never seen a quilt layout like this. It is incredibly creative and I love how many things the piecer would learn making it. Do you see how it gives the piecer so many different patchwork borders to dabble in? All of those border elements are great learning tools and serve to give structure to the quilt allowing the quilt blocks to float throughout. The large star blocks draw the eye while the rest of the top dances around them. I decided to use my Dunbar Moons collection as the backbone for the quilting spaces. Using the same design collection not only gave the quilting a unified voice, it also narrowed down some of the choices I had. Sometimes one of the biggest obstacles to selecting an approach to a quilt top is that there are too many choices to make. In this case, I knew my Dunbar Moons collection had the modern feel I needed for this quilt top. For the large star blocks I used the 8 point star P2P deisgns from DigiTechPatterns.com using the same technique found in the video below.

Up next, part 2!