red and white quilt: stars with checkerboard, top completed

Red and white quilt: stars with checkerboard
94 by 74 inches

The fabric used in the light squares of the star is from my mother's sewing in the 1960s

One of my goals in planning a quilt is to have all seams nest with no twisting. But sometimes that doesn't work out and I am ok with that--I call the flipped seams "twisted sisters". This quilt mostly nests flat, but there are a number of twisted sisters. Maybe with extra planning I could have eliminated them, but I did not take the time to figure that out.

When Joanna S. Rose had her fabulous 2011 red and white Infinite Variety quilt show at the Armory,  I thought I would like to make a red and white quilt every year. The only large one I have made is my Red Cross (pieced before her show).
Well over a decade later, I finally decided it was time for a red and white quilt.
And in the process, cut parts for two other red and white quilts while I had the reds at the cutting table. Those will be at the ready for pick up sewing.

I had quite a few reds on my shelves, friends gave me more from their shelves, and I did a bit of shopping. There are about 60 different reds used for the 48 stars and hundreds of different reds in the checkerboards.
The white is Kona Snow. I went through 3 yards pretty quickly so I bought a 9 yard bolt for this and future projects.

I first intended to make different sizes of stars, but fell in love with the 8 inch ones. They show off the great prints. I had just made checkerboard for the most recent alphabet quilt and decided to scale down to 1 inch finished checkerboard.
This used up a great number of 1 1/2 inch red squares from my bins. I also cut down many from the 1 1/2 by 2 1/2 inch rectangles bin to add to the variety.
I intended a triangle boarder but it was too much. Instead I added an extra row of checkerboard to the outside and ended with a 4 1/2 inch cut white border.
I plan to bind with white.

I did not plan ahead how many 4-patches I would need for the checkerboard. I just kept making 4-patches, sewing them into sashings, then making more. Each time I would make a pile thinking this would surely be enough, and it wasn't. Toward the end I was anticipating having a huge pile of leftovers and making something else with them. When I made the final sashing, ONE 4-patch remained unused.

No real directions, but the basics are:
8 inch finished stars
1 inch finished checkerboard
4 1/2 inch cut plain borders
I found it best to sew with the star on top at every step of assembly.

My design--use at your pleasure.

Had just enough of that fabulous floral for the center and a bit remaining that went into the checkerboard

Mustard!

That jump rope fabric of Latifah Safir is one of my favorites. Because it leans orange, I made several other red-oranges to put near it to help it blend in.