Almost Planetarium

I'm a big fan of Elizabeth Hartman - I love her blog and her book, The Practical Guide to Patchwork.  I've poured over the book many times and each time I see something different.   When I first looked really closely at her Planetarium quilt, I really liked how the quarter square triangle/hourglass blocks had a very blendy quality to them.  I couldn't quite make out the block design, although it was a quilt block basic.

I've had a stash of Kaffe Fasset and Martha Negley fabrics for some time and this pattern made me pull out my stash to finally use it.  I needed to do some serious fussy cutting to get the right part of the florals into my blocks, but I am really happy with the result.   I used white Essex linen for the sashing and pulled some fun colors for the frames around my blocks.   Definitely a bright, summer quilt, even though it was impossible to get a photo of the true colors of this quilt.

I only made 9 blocks instead of the 16 shown in the book.   I also realized too late that I'd only used 2 fabrics in each block, where the designer used 4 fabrics.   So that's why I'm calling mine "Almost Planetarium."

A tool that was indispensible to me while making this quilt was Monique Dillard's new Fit to Be Quarter ruler.  I loved using it and it will be a staple in my ruler collection.  Please stop by next week for the 4th of July Fireworks Blog Hop.  Monique invited me and a few other quilters to demonstrate the ruler, share our 4th of July memories or quilts or recipes and I know you would all love an opportunity to win a Fit to be Quarter ruler.   The fun starts on Monday, July 4.