Spring Stars Quilt in Progress

This post is sponsored by Cricut.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.  Post may also contain affiliate links.

Today I thought I'd share some behind the scenes of a quilt that I've been working on lately.  I'm calling this one Spring Stars.  

The soft, pastel colors are just what I'm needing right now.  I'm getting really tired of gray, snowy days and starting to look forward to daffodils and tulips!

Here are some of the fabrics I've pulled to use in this quilt.  I found some of them in my stash, and I added a few that I bought in my local quilt shop.  I'm loving the mint/pink/gray/yellow combo, but I'm thinking of adding in a few light green prints maybe to add more variety.  What do you think?  Add green?  Or leave it as-is?

I decided to use my Cricut Maker machine to help me cut out all of the diamond shapes.  And here's the biggest reason why....

Not only will it cut the funky diamond shapes (sweet!), but it will also mark the 1/4" markings on each point.  You can see the marker in the photo below.  It's a washable fabric pen that I can pop right into the spot on the left.  The cutting blade is on the right.  

I add my fabric (right side down) to the mat and the machine marks and then cuts each piece.  This is what I have after peeling off the extra fabric: 

And here's how the pieces are arranged for each block. You can see that the blue dots aren't visible from the front of the fabric: 

I also had the Cricut cut and mark all of the background (white) diamonds I would need for this quilt.  

I needed a TON of them but I just sat and watched Netflix while the machine worked it's magic.  I had to stay close by to swap out the mats each time, but it went a lot quicker than if I was cutting and marking all of these by hand!

Why do I need all of those little blue dots, you ask?  They're super handy!  They show me where to start and stop stitching when I'm piecing the block.  

There are a lot of Y-seams in these blocks!  When you sew a Y-seam, you have to start and stop 1/4" away from the edge of the fabric.  You can see in the photo below how my stitching stops at the dot.  That will allow me to sew the white background diamond in next, along that edge. 

Don't worry...I'll be doing a tutorial on all of this soon.  And I'll also add in some regular rotary cutting instructions for those of you that don't own a Cricut Maker.

In the mean time, I have a lot of piecing to do and I'd better get to work!  If you want to make sure you don't miss out on the tutorial, I recommend signing up for my newsletter here.

Happy sewing!
--Andy


P.S.  Want to know more about the Cricut Maker machine?  Check out this post.  And you can find some fun Cricut Maker tutorials here on my Pinterest board!