It's finished! And I think this might be one of the happiest quilts I've ever made.
This colorful version of my Star Dots quilt pattern started with one jelly roll of Merry Happy by Kimberly Kight for Ruby Star Society.
Merry Happy is technically a Christmas collection – but definitely not Christmas in the traditional red-and-green sense. With dark greens, aqua, yellow, pink and red, pluss gummy bears and whimsical ornaments, it has a bright and playful feel that I absolutely love.
Once I arranged all those colors in a colorwash, my Star Dots quilt ended up somewhere between a rainbow quilt and a modern Christmas quilt. Which, as it turns out, is a combination I REALLY like.
Can you make Star Dots from one jelly roll?
Almost!
I used one Merry Happy jelly roll for the entire colorful background of the Baby size Star Dots quilt, then added some extra light fabrics from my stash for the stars.
I wrote a separate blog post about the whole experiment – how I sorted the jelly roll, planned the colorwash, worked with value and figured out just how far one jelly roll would take me.
Read: Can you make a Star Dots baby quilt with one jelly roll?
One thing I love about this version is how the stars change as they travel through the quilt. The light fabrics pop against the dark greens and reds, while they blend much more softly into the yellows and aquas.
A generously sized baby quilt
The size I made is called Baby in the Star Dots pattern, but it's actually a generously sized little quilt. At 46" x 54" (117 × 137 cm), it works just as well as a small couch quilt, play quilt or lap quilt.
Star Dots comes in five sizes, from Table Runner to King. And one of my favorite things about the design is that there are no star points to accidentally lose in your seams.
Quilted with Popcorn
Once the quilt top was finished, I sent it to Sissel Borgh Svange at Sy-snacks for longarm quilting.
We chose the Popcorn pantograph, and I love the movement it adds to all those squares and stars. The soft, rounded quilting is a nice contrast to the geometric patchwork.
Then it came back home for binding – and my one-jelly-roll experiment was officially a finished quilt.
The binding is Mini Starry in Multi on Natural by Ruby Star Society, and the backing is Spools in Goldfish from the Trinketry collection by Melody Miller, also Ruby Star. As you can see, I added in a few other low volume prints and a white solid for the stars – predominantly Starry.
A photoshoot at home
No mountains, fjords or old Norwegian buildings for this one.
I photographed the finished quilt right here in my living room. With a quilt this colorful, I wanted to keep the surroundings fairly simple and let the fabrics do most of the work.
On a few of the photos, my original Star Dots quilt joined in too. I love seeing the two together: same pattern, completely different feeling. The original has a cozy, more traditional Christmas look, while Merry Happy turns Star Dots into something bright, modern and almost rainbow-like.
It's such a good reminder of how much the fabric changes a quilt pattern.
A modern Christmas quilt – or just a rainbow quilt?
Technically, this is a Ruby Star Christmas quilt. Merry Happy is a Christmas collection, after all.
But would I put this quilt away in January?
Absolutely not.
The stars give it a little Christmas feeling, but the rainbow color palette makes it work year-round. So whether you see this as a modern Christmas quilt, a rainbow star quilt, or simply a very colorful Star Dots, I'm happy.
Mostly, I'm just VERY glad I finally cut into that jelly roll.
If you have a beautiful jelly roll sitting on your shelf waiting for the perfect project, perhaps this is your sign to use it.
GET THE STAR DOTS PDF QUILT PATTERN
And if you'd like to see exactly how I turned one jelly roll into this quilt, including my tips for arranging the colorwash and working with fabric value: