Evening Star circles

an easy applique adventure

When I designed the Pas de Deux sampler in 2021, my goal was to make a scrap quilt that would be a delight to sew. I wanted to use a variety of patchwork styles and techniques, to keep things interesting and to enable the use of different types of scraps.

Now I am sewing a Pas de Deux quilt with my local circle of do. Good Stitches, a charity quilting bee. Each of my bee mates have chosen a portion of the quilt to sew this February. I’ll be making several portions myself, so as not to overtax my collaborators.

I started by sewing Postage Stamp Stars, a personal favorite. It’s a relaxing, straightforward sew in a familiar color palette.

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For my next installment in this quilt, I am working in totally different colors. That’s because I’ve planned out a rainbow blend Pas de Deux, where the quilt transitions vertically through the rainbow from purple at the top through blues, greens, yellows, etc. as you move down the quilt top. Today’s new installment belongs in the lime/yellow/orange region of the quilt.

This patchwork group is called Evening Star. It creates 4-point star shapes by appliquéing circles onto background squares. Sounds strange, I know, but that is how it works! The technique that I am using here is quite beginner-friendly. I call it sew-and-turn applique.

These pretty circles and half-circles will be chopped up into quarter-circles…

Then arranged like so over gray backgrounds.

Do you see the gray stars? Very often the circles stand out more than the star backgrounds, so perhaps Evening Star wasn’t the right name for this group. Shrugs. Oh well!

It’s fun to see the rainbow blend starting, even with just these two patchwork sections. There’s blue at the top, then come teal, green, lime yellow and soft orange. I’m looking forward to adding more elements as blocks start arriving from my bee mates. Plus, maybe next week I’ll sew another section myself!