"Heirloom" - Knitted Star Quilt

Written by Brittany Lloyd

I’m excited to share about the first of five quilts that I made with my new "Heirloom" bundle with Robert Kaufman. If you haven’t yet read about this bundle or seen all of the pretty fabric combinations you can make with it, but sure to check out this blog post.

We did a poll over on Instagram to see which “Heirloom” quilt you wanted to hear about first and this Knitted Star quilt won the popular vote!

It’s hard to believe but Knitted Star is 4 years old! Over the years, it’s become a fan favorite for a classic and traditional look using two fabrics or a fun and unique look using fat quarters. The pattern offers two sets of instructions for these two options…and I decided to put a “spin” on the Modern instructions to create what you see here.

For the throw size, the Modern version uses 8 fat quarters…one FQ per star. For this quilt, I wanted to try to use as many fat quarters from the “Heirloom” fat quarter bundle as possible, so I decided to use 4 fabrics for each star, using 16 fat quarters total (plus two FQs for the block sashing squares). This creates lots of depth and dimension to the quilt, while adding a little bit more color and interest.

It did take a little bit of calculating and planning before I got started. If you’ve made the pattern before, you know that it uses a quick strip-piecing method. I didn’t want to loose that element with this modification, so while there’s a few extra strip sets involved with making this quilt, I think the end result is very much worth it!

If you’re looking to make this exact quilt, be sure to download this PDF which explains exactly how I modified the pattern. You’ll also need to grab a copy of the Knitted Star quilt pattern for the PDF to make sense. :)

Let's talk about the background fabric! I’ve always been a fan of darker backgrounds with this pattern. The cover Knitted Star quilt (found here) uses Kona Gotham Grey. I also made a sample that has multi-color stars and a dark background (found here). Well, for this sample, I used a fabric by Robert Kaufman called Neon Neppy and I LOVE the fun little flecks of color that it adds! If you’ve never sewn with this fabric before, it’s very drape-y and soft with a hand that is slightly more loose and flowy than a traditional quilting cotton. It feels like a really soft yarn-dyed woven. Which is nice! It added a lovely backdrop for the main colors to shine, but the little flecks are definitely a fun and unexpected surprise.

Along with the 16 fat quarters used for the stars, I used another fat quarter from the bundle for the cornerstone fabrics. I had a lot of fun adding this stripe into the mix with I was designing this bundle. It felt like the perfect fit to add it in with these mostly solid-ish stars. I cut the fabric at a 45 degree angle so that the strips would run horizontally/vertically in the quilt. If you’re curious about how I did that, check out this reel.

I sent off this quilt to be long-arm quilted by Sarah of Stitch Lab Quilting. A few years ago I picked a pantograph called Argyle by Liesha Farnsworth. I actually used this pantograph on my bed size Knitted Star that I made a few years ago. It looks so pretty with this pattern! We went with a hot pink thread which looks SO beautiful with these fabrics and Neon Neppy background fabric. All in all, it feels slightly edgy and I love it!

The backing is one of my go-to Kona colors... Gumdrop. For the binding, I wanted an understated look, so I used the background fabric to provide a frame around the quilt.