Bright Sky QAL: Week 1 – Centre Star

Alright folks, let’s get this Bright Sky quilting par-tay started! If you haven’t grabbed it already, the pattern is on sale for only 2 more days (sale ends Wednesday October 8th 11:59pm JST), and once you’ve got it, this week’s task is to get your centre star done. And I want to encourage you to have some fun with it!

You can see in the original pattern that the centre star is the perfect size for featuring your favourite large-scale print, like my precious Kate Spain Cuzco peacocks! But I’m also all about bending the rules a little and having some fun adapting patterns to suit myself.

Angie aka Gnome Angel used the same print for her fussy-cut centre square and the star points as seen on her Instagram.

Amy aka A Quilting Sheep added a smaller star with some patchwork to her centre square!

I originally planned on keeping to the pattern, but when an Instagram friend saved my day by sending me some more of the Angela Walter’s Legacy print than I actually needed, I decided to add to the centre square. I’ve added the original quilt block (Night Sky quilt block found in Fat Quarterly Issue 13) that inspired this quilt design so now it’s a Night Sky in a Bright Sky! Or as another friend so eloquently said, an infinite bright sky!

The great thing about this quilt is that it’s so quick to piece. I finished this inner star section yesterday afternoon while housebound by the oncoming typhoon (which is due to directly hit Tokyo/us midday today, eek!). In fact, I would have had the whole quilt finished instead if I had kept the centre simple! Oh, and the typhoon is also responsible for these photos – taken at 2pm and it looks like 9pm! So hopefully we don’t blow away, or lose power, and I’ll be able to keep up with you all QALers.

QAL Housekeeping

We’ve had a couple more sponsors offer some prizes for the QAL! That’s always fun! So we have a new prize category to inspire you this week – for a unique centre star! One quilt linked up at the end with a unique centre star pattern adaptation will win a $30 gift certificate to Miss Matatabi and a 6 month subscription to Make Modern! But don’t worry, sticking with the pattern as-is is also just as good too – there’s plenty of other prizes to go around.

Don’t forget the Shabby Fabrics 15% coupon code BrightSkyQAL is good for the duration of the whole QAL until November 21st!

And as you saw on me yesterday, Bright Sky t-shirts are now available at Patchwork Threads!! Share your progress on Instagram usiing #pwtbrightskyqal to be in the chance to win. And in fact, our first winner is…. @gnomeangel!! Congratulations girl, you dominated the feed this week, so you had some very good chances with the scroll-scroll-scroll-tap method of randomly picking a winner, haha! I’ll be in touch! Keep a-sharin’ and a-taggin’, because there’s 4 more chances to win over the next 4 Mondays!