Etoile Quilt | Cover Quilt & Testers

Etoile quilt release day is here! Etoile means “star” in French, and how perfect a name for this starburst of a quilt! Etoile comes in 4 sizes: pillow, wall hanging, baby, and throw, with fat quarter and yardage requirements provided. It is beginner friendly and comes together crazy fast!

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My cover quilt for Etoile was actually the first one I made. I knew I wanted to use this amazing unicorn print for the backing, so I used it as my starting point for choosing the fabrics for the front. (Psst! If you want to pattern match your back so you don’t end up with headless unicorns, click here). I pulled my fabrics all from stash, and ended with the following:

Color 1: Cloud 9 Cirrus Solids in Lilac
Color 2: PBS Fabrics Painter’s Palette Solids in White
Color 3: PBS Fabrics Painter’s Palette Solids in Azure
Background: PBS Fabrics Painter’s Palette Solids in Forest
Binding: PBS Fabrics Painter’s Palette Solids in Moss

I think Jason was happy that for once my background fabric wasn’t white. White quilts make him nervous because the possibility for staining them is so much greater. And our quilts actually get used and loved around our house! When it came to quilting it, I actually jumped in without much of a plan. I added some straight line quilting with my Janome to provide a guide and some stability, and decided to hand stitch the rest of the quilt. I ended up working one color at a time, deciding on the shape and direction of the lines as I went along. Basically, I winged it.

I love how it turned out! The hand quilting adds so much texture to the quilt, but since I matched thread colors to fabric, the quilting blends into the quilt. All the texture, none of the distraction. I used Aurifil thread for all the quilting (machine and by hand) in #2021, #5007, #2479, and #4026. I love how I can get 12 weight and 50 weight thread in the same color!

I bound the quilt in big stitches, and I have a tutorial for that. It is by far my favorite way to bind a quilt!