Every year Robert Kaufman releases a limited edition New Kona Cotton color and it's called the Color of the Year (COTY). This year, the new color is called Crush and is a stunning bright Coral/Red/Pink color. I was lucky enough to get to make a project for this year's COTY release and I am SO excited.
Almost immediately after agreeing to make a quilt with the new color, I knew I wanted to make it a two color quilt. I have some other patterns that would make it easy to do that - Inside Out Star and Paper Cuts - but I wanted to do it with Nova Star.
The Nova Star Quilt pattern provides three sizes and two different color options - a Modern Solid that uses yardage and a Color Explosion that uses FQs or 1/2 yards. Well, it was easy enough to convert the Modern Solid yardage instructions into a two color option. A Nova Star Block has 8 fabric pieces and so essentially 4 pieces are cut from Color 1 and the other 4 are cut from Color 2. I will provide an extra tutorial sheet for anyone who wants to do this too!
Okay, the next steps after figuring out how to make this happen, was to pick what two colors to use. Of course I was going to use Crush but what color did I want to pair it with? And then did I want Crush to be the Color that involves all the background fabrics or the one that stands out a little more in the design? Let's look at my options for Crush (COTY) to be the stand out choice:
Then I played with the idea of COTY being the color that involves all the background and sashing pieces.
After some back and forth, I decided I liked having the COTY quilt be the color that kinda dances across the quilt and using Sassy Pink as the color that grounds it and includes the background/sashing pieces.
These are the four Kona Cotton Colors we used for the entire quilt. Crush and Sassy Pink for the quilt top, Bright Idea for the binding and Cedar for the backing.
Here is the extra tutorial page needed. You can download the image or click the link here and download it.
So for this quilt - Color 1 is Crush (COTY) and Color 2 is Sassy Pink. Color 1 is the color that "dances across the quilt" and Color 2 is the color that grounds it AKA background and sashing. Then you just follow all the cutting instructions in the pattern by the Cut name and size you are making (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, SASHING). It is very straight forward!
Once you have all your pieces cut, you can just go to town chain piecing all the pieces. We started with all of the flying geese first. Then we did the HSTs. Then it was about assembling the blocks themselves. Even though there are a good amount of flying geese and HSTs that need trimming, the chain piecing really sped up the process.
Once all of our individual components were trimmed and ready, then we started sewing the smaller center stars of the Nova Star Block.
I just love Sawtooth Stars so so much. They are simple and bold and satisfying to make. And these two bright bold colors together? AMAZING. And then we continued to build our Nova Star Blocks!
Once all the blocks were done, then it was sewing it all up!
It was really fun to see the whole thing come together but also sort of hard for my camera to capture the colors accurately.
We snuck outside and snapped a few photos by our Studio.
I sent this quilt off to Emily of So Sunny Quilts to work her quilting magic on it. And I knew right away I wanted a fun curve heavy pantograph with super dense scale. I love the texture and small repeat scale of the pantograph on this Nova Star. We used a pantograph called Moon Phases.
We took these photos in our new studio and we brought up our new rug because the colors paired perfectly with the quilt. We made a little urban jungle with all the plants too.
We then added a chair and Redford decided it was time to be a part of this photoshoot.
Redford approves of this quilt. Paw of approval.
I super love the new Kona COTY - Crush. I can't wait to use it more. We also have a limited edition Nova Star Quilt Kit for anyone who wants to make this exact quilt! I love how bold and happy the quilt turned out.
Once all the blocks were done, then it was sewing it all up! 
We then added a chair and Redford decided it was time to be a part of this photoshoot.
