We’ve settled into our new home in Orange, NSW, and narrowly escaped the floods currently ravaging Victoria. My mind has entered back into that ‘high alert’ mode that we knew so well in Covid, checking the news constantly, looking for updates. We settle on our old home in Castlemaine in a week, and I would love it to go through smoothly, unimpeded by flood damage or insurance hassles. But apart from my own stresses, it just weighs on me when you watch such devastation unfold.

And so Evie and I took this finished Flock of Stars Quilt out to the Lake to see how the dam wall is going, and take some photos. It was so peaceful out at the lake, with just the sound of water, and the odd couple walking to have a look. Water under control, or water at the right time, is such a beautiful, life giving thing.

We chatted about how that occurs in all parts of life, how something good can turn destructive if there’s too much of it, or without the proper care and attention. Evie heads back to school in a few weeks, after 2 1/2 years of homeschool and I’ll miss having so much time for these meaningful and incidental conversations.

Flock of Stars is a quilt that I made to promote my new Big Box of 2” Diamonds, now available in the shop! It was an easy, relaxed quilt that I started while getting the house ready to sell, using all Ruby Star Society prints, with Tomato Tomahto by Kim Kight forming the base of the colour palette. I particularly love the burnt orange and periwinke blue, but now that I hold it up, finished, I wish I’d gone more completely scrappy. I find it hard to really love a quilt if it doesn’t have more jewel tones in it like fuschia, plum and teal. Still, a good friend of mine had a baby boy a few weeks ago, and I think these happy, playful colours will suit him wonderfully.

I’m not going to write a pattern for this quilt, but I can give you some details. I made 94 6pt stars, by first sewing all the half stars, and then sewing them together. I find that sewing all the halves first, rather than making a star at a time, helps to spread out the fabrics. There’s almost nothing worse when making a scrappy than getting to the end and having 10 diamonds in one print left!

After I sewed the stars together, I sewed 10 ‘half blocks’ of 4 diamonds. This is easiest done by sewing 40 diamonds into pairs, and then sewing the pairs together.

Once I’d finished the stars, I added three low volume diamonds to each star. Once this is done they, interlock together in such a satisfying way! I sewed the stars into rows, and then sewed the rows together. At this stage you need to make sure that your stars are always sitting in the same direction. I remembered this by having the first diamond at the top of the block, and then the rest moving around the block to the right.

I always add in the half blocks last. Partly this is so I don’t have to work out or remember how many joining diamonds you need and where on each half block. This kind of pattern gets disrupted at the edge of a quilt, and it’s easy to wait and see what you need for each side.

Then I filled the little gaps at the top and bottom with leftover low volume diamonds I had on hand (you could also use 2” triangles, or cut the diamond papers in half)

For quilting, I used the low volume diamonds as a guide, and sewed straight lines, about 1/4” from each side of the seam. I like how this outlines the points of the stars, and leaves a quilted hexagon in the centre.

The quilt ended up around 52” x 58” and used all 920 diamonds in the Big Box of diamonds.

Even though I’d do it differently next time, I do love how the lower contrast sections make the stars move in and out of focus. In some places it looks like they overlap, which was completely accidental, but I love it. And scrappy, repeated shape quilts, while not having the most impact held out flat, are always so wonderful scrunched up and snuggled.

Buy the big box of diamonds here!