Award Winning Broken Star Quilt

After seeing an AQS award winning quilt by Kathy Bradbury, I realized that the quilt is drafting friendly when using a layout from the Electric Quilt 8 layout library.    Scroll down to see the quilt and learn how to draft it yourself.
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I also am excited to feature some amazing designs from Tech Know Quilter members who have been super busy designing (and in some cases making) quilts.

Tech Know Quilters Showcase

Current Tech Know Quilter members have been sharing their class projects along with their original designs in the membership's private Facebook group.  Enjoy this show of some of their recent creations.

You can learn more about the Tech Know Quilters membership program and sign up for the wait list for the next open enrollment period here.

Marcia Jensen As I worked in the Mix and Match Medallions lessons this month, the creative juices really began to flow! First up: medallions, working with poly draw - shapes, and adding borders!

Marcia Jensen Here's a second, working in the Mix and Match Medallions lessons. I love taking a quadrant of the applique shapes and turning it into a new block, then making a quilt out of it! I might try to make this one someday... "Santa Fe."

Marcia Jensen Again, in the Mix and Match medallions lessons - suddenly an idea "appeared" out of nowhere for a table runner!

Julie Pedersen I used a quilt that I designed for the Star Layouts from EQ8 to create this one.

Star Layout from the Library used by Julie.

Julies quilt from the lesson.

Jane Perri This quilt combined blocks we worked on in PolyDraw with a tumbling block I created in EasyDraw for a different project. Trying to get the shadowing right was fun.

Curryanne Hostetler I designed this for my quilt club “River runs through it” Challenge with all 1" pieces. The challenge specified that the river had to be 2" to 6" from the bottom and if the quilt had a binding the river needed to be part of the binding.

Lee Wiencki In Landscape quilts I did two really different landscape quilts. One I would consider traditional and the other photo-realism.

Lee Wiencki Photo-realism, which is a new type of quilt for me.

Zdenka Nemethová For me it was all about Stars in March. I took Star quilts class and Star Layouts in Masters. Busy month. For this "Something Springy" quilt I used Stars 25 layout from Layout library and used some hints that Kari showed us on her great March Colorplay panel quilt lesson and Easter egg hunt webinar.

Zdenka Nemethova's finished quilt.

Rhonda Goss Master's Class star Layouts. Layout seventeen used for the quilt.

Curryanne Hostetler I got a new star layout and several new blocks along with some from class

Lynne Maramieri I played with the rotation and colouring until I found something I liked.

Edith Craig My class this month was Master's Star Layout. I took the concepts from the class along with some of the library blocks and blocks we drafted in class, adding them to Layout Style Star 48. The layout library is a great source of inspiration, and the variety of blocks adds an infinite number of quilt options. It was great fun to play with the options.

Robin Floyd I am still learning. I really enjoyed this class. It was a challenge. I used some batiks (my favorite) and recolored this block which I really like. Simple, but a start.

Christina Marie DeChellis This was my take on the Flying Geese Quilt from Lesson 7. I used a the Blissful Basics fabric collection. This one I plan to make! Very excited, wonderful class this month! Thank you, Kari!

Sara Edmonds Byman I made a quilt out of one of my EQ8 lessons! It was last month's T-Shirt Quilt and Panel Quilts.

Linda Carlson This is Lesson 7 of the Masters Stars Layouts from EQ8. Very good class!

Terry McCaskey I enjoyed learning new techniques in the TKQ Landscape class last month. Here is my photo and EQ quilt of the Badlands.

Terry's inspirational photo.

Fran Heisey Master Class - Star Layouts from the EQ Library is a great class, it prompted me to try to make my own different shaped blocks from Library Layout blocks that I can set blocks into. I have made blocks that form a triangle, pentagon, octagon, nonagon, decagon, and dodecagon.. Each of the blocks was made from from an EQ Library right triangle block. Here, is a layout where I have just colored the blocks with solid colors.

Fran Heisey Here are the triangle, pentagon and dodecagon with blocks set into them.

Learn More About Tech Know Quilters and Sign Up for the Wait List

Broken Star Quilt using EQ8

In the collection of quilt designs from the Tech Know Quilter's showcase, you may have noticed that a number of them were designs that started with one of the Star layouts in the Electric Quilt layout library.  The layout library includes a large number of ready-made custom set layouts.  In the Tech Know Quilter's class, we covered modifying the layouts to personalize a design and then playing with their own blocks in those layouts.

Today on Facebook I saw a post from the American Quilter's Society. 

​They posted a picture of this amazing quilt by Kathy Bradbury of Milton Florida.

As I was looking at the center of the quilt, I realized the layout is one in the EQ Stars layout library.

I wonder if Kathy uses EQ8 for her designs.

Broken Star by Kathy Bradbury

​AQS QuiltWeek - Paducah 2023 Semi-finalist
BLUE JEANS, PEARLS AND DRAMA by Kathy Bradbury of Milton, Florida
91" x 91"
Design Source: Piping Hot Curves by Susan K. Cleveland
About her quilt, she writes, "This is a traditional Broken Star but as I was making it I wanted to make it more dramatic so I added spires (I lovingly call them 'eyelashes'). I was inspired by Susan Cleveland's Curved Piping when adding the border. It took 86 hours to quilt this."

Let me share my thoughts on using Electric Quilt 8 to design the center of this quilt.  (And yes -- the border could be designed in EQ  as well -- but that is beyond the scope of a blog post.)

Blocks for the Quilt

For the center of Kathy's fabulous quilt, there are only two blocks.  And both can be drafted in EasyDraw.  In coloring the blocks, I used default fabrics that were similar in value to Kathy's quilt -- just to keep things simple.

5 x 5 Grid Drawn in EasyDraw

Quilt Layout

Spiky Wheel Drawn in EasyDraw

The layout I chose was Star Layout 49 from the EQ8 Layout Library.  You will love what the layout does with the 5 x 5 grid.  And these blocks could be strip pieced to create a stunning star quilt.

Star Layout 49 from the EQ8 Library

Here are the quilts from the video.

Broken Star Quilt with 5 x 5 Grid in Diamond Spaces

Broken Star Quilt with 8 Pointed Star in Diamond Spaces

And yes -- you could draft Kathy's amazing border in Electric Quilt as well.  But that is more involved and outside the scope of a blog post.

I also played with the blocks in a different Star layout (Stars 29).  This is not part of the video.   EQ is so much fun.

Stars 29 Layout from the EQ Library

I look forward to seeing what layout you decide to work with -- and what blocks you included in the layout.   Post your favorite in the Learning EQ Facebook group.  I've set up a dedicated post for your quilt designs.

Learning EQ Facebook Group Broken Star Layout Post

Happy quilting.

​Kari

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