Starry Way: Let’s start a patriotic version!

Hello quilting friends! In less than a week, I will be attending my annual quilting retreat with longtime sewing friends. I’ve blogged about these treasured times before, so you know how special this group is to me. I’m counting the days! Last night I was on a mission to get all of my projects organized for next weekend, but even in my excitement for Koronis, I hit a snag.

A basket of red, white and blue scraps kept distracting me with their loveliness. I attempted to ignore them. I tried to stay on task, but eventually I gave in. I grabbed one of my early charm pack patterns, Starry Way, and just began cutting and sewing. In no time at all I had four sweet little blocks that will eventually find their way into a patriotic table runner. Yeah!

I love buying charm packs as much as the next crazy quilter, but the truth is, most charm pack patterns lend themselves just as easily to using our saved scraps. While my original Starry Way from 2017 was sewn from a beautiful Christmas charm pack by Basic Gray, I feel confident that I will also love my patriotic version that I am creating from saved pieces!

Here’s a photo of the original Starry Way. Because I used a charm pack, there is a lot of variety among the little log cabins.

Since I’m cutting from what I have on hand, there won’t be as much variety in my patriotic Starry Way. It’s a leap of sewing faith, and I’m excited to see how it turns out. Starry Way is available as a PDF pattern on my Etsy Shop.

I plan to continue to work on my patriotic Starry Way while at retreat. I also have a new pattern in development called Frosty Forest, and I’ll be making that sample quilt at retreat. I’m so excited about this new pattern. I think you’ll love it.  Here’s a sneak peek of the fabrics I’ll be using. What you see is a mix of Moda fabric collections, some old and some upcoming. I’ll give you the full scoop at pattern release. I can tell you that Frosty Forest is made with 7 green and 7 blue fat quarters, in case you want to start collecting now.

Thank you all for your quilting friendship! I hope you find a circle of friends nearby to share in your sewing joy. At the end of this blog post, I’ve shared links to my past blog posts about our annual retreat in hopes that it might encourage you to strike up a gathering of your own.  We don’t have swag bags, presenters or classes at our gathering, but we do share a lot of love and giggles, snacking and sewing. I am so thankful that a few church ladies, many moons ago, invited me to join them.

I want to wish you all a blessed Easter. May God shine his face upon you, be gracious to you, and give you His peace.

~Taunja

Koronis Retreat Blog Posts:

• Stars & Stripes quilt: my beachy version
• Counting my quilting blessings
• Quilt retreat: A wonderful place to start a pumpkin quilt
• Koronis quilting retreat