Milky Way Sampler Quilt is finally finished!

In January 2017 I joined Alyce Blossom Heart Quilts and many other lovely quilters of Instagram in the Milky Way Sampler Quilt Along. A free block was available for download once a month (12 blocks in total) or the whole pattern could be purchased at once (12 block + extra block 13). I chose to download one star per month and I was sewing a block a month till September. Then life happened, I was taking part in other sewalongs and sewing other projects.

As I result I didn’t finish the quilt at the end of 2017 as I intended to do in the beginning. However I always came back to the blocks and definitely wanted to finish them all! In the end I purchased the whole pattern to be able to sew block 13 too.

I finally finished the quilt about a week ago.

I’d love to document the process of the making of it. I chose to use 76 fabric collection by Alison Glass for each block. Each block was Foundation Paper Pieced (FPP) according to the pattern. FPP is my favourite technique and thus these stars were very simple to sew for me. I decided to use fussy cutting to make the piecing more complicated for myself and to add extra interest.

See pics of each block below:

Block No 1. Sirius.

Block No 2. Canopus.

Block No 3. Alpha Centauri.

Block No 4. Arcturus.

Block No 5. Vega.

Block No 6. Capella.

Block No 7. Rigel.

Block No 8. Polaris.

Block No 9. Betelgeuse.

Block No 10. Sol.

Block No 11. Acrux.

Block No 12. Deneb.

Block No 13. Celestial.

I put all these 13 blocks into a quilt top at the beginning of June 2018.

We had a proper scorcher in the UK so I couldn’t even think of basting or quilting. These last steps had to be postponed until the weather cooled down a bit. Closer to the end of August I basted, quilted it and binded the deal in just one day.

It took me only one year and 8 months from beginning to end 🙂

I am very pleased with the result!