Nova Star Quilt - the Nova one

September 11, 2026

I know people like to call the winter holidays the happiest time of the year, but here at TCJ HQ, we are all in on fall. Like ALLLLL in.

Listen, summer is lovely. Pool days, beach trips, loose plans...love it all. But Meghan and I both thrive on routine and freaking love a schedule. So the second the calendar flips to September, look out. Between the kids going back to school, us getting back in the studio, cooler temperatures returning, and Meghan's birthday coming up later in the month, September is our happiest time of the year. So naturally, we kicked off September 2025 with one of our happiest quilts of the year as our September Make of the Month.

Meet Nova Star Nova.

We did the math and realized it had been FOUR YEARS since we had made a Color Explosion Nova Star out of FQs! It's one of our favorite patterns, and a constant bestseller, so we're not sure why we had been overlooking it, but clearly its time had come.

The Nova Star quilt pattern is an Intermediate skill level and requires detailed organizational skills as well as accurate cutting and piecing. It’s not hard, but it is involved. There are a lot of small flying geese with trimming but these blocks are SO satisfying to make. We decided to make the Throw Size, which uses 20 FQs and finishes at 54.75" x 68". We had already pulled a 20-piece FQ bundle - aptly named Nova - that we knew we were going to use, so all that was left was to decide what to use for our background and our cornerstones.

Right away we knew we wanted to use a classic black and white gingham (Carolina Gingham 1/4") in this quilt. But we weren't sure if it would be the cornerstones or the background, and we weren't sure what it would be paired with. We tried everything from a dusty pink to a plum to a terracotta orange before landing on Bella Cinnamon. And when we finally switched the gingham to the background and Cinnamon to the cornerstones we knew we had it.

(Well, if we're being honest, we knew we had something. We knew we were excited by it, but we were a little nervous it might be a crazy decision. The "safer" decision would definitely have been Cinnamon as the background, gingham cornerstones. But safe is boring, and we are not boring. Spoiler: once these blocks started coming together, we knew we made the right call.)

It took us a minute to remember how we cut and organize ourselves while preparing a Nova Star, but we quickly got back in the groove, and soon had our pretty pretty cut piles.

I handed the reigns back to Meghan at this point and she worked her magic mixing and matching all of our cut pieces into their block piles. And yes, we had a mock up from earlier, but that was mainly to decide the background and cornerstones; we knew we would not be following it for the actual blocks, and would instead want to mix + match with the fabric actually in hand.

We stacked our block piles from outer most part of the block at the bottom to the inner most at the top - starting with the HSTs, outer flying geese, bars, and inside star. And we made sure no fabrics repeat within the single block (except for the background gingham).

With ourselves organized, it was time to start sewing. Want to see a block come together?

Above, you can see how the fabric cuts are separated into their units (from largest cut to smallest: HSTs, outer flying geese, bars, inside star).

Below, is how we organize ourselves to sew a single block. The top left pile are the fabric cuts we don’t need until all the HSTs and flying geese are sewn and trimmed. So we will batch sew the flying geese and HSTs first before assembling the block together.

Below: HSTs (top) and flying geese (bottom) pinned and ready to sew.

Once all the HSTs and flying geese are trimmed and ready, we start assembling the entire block together from the center out.

Ta da!! A finished Nova Star block. These blocks are truly so fun, even with the trimming needed. There is a pace and rhythm to them, and they are so satisfying every single time.

Let's not waste anymore time. More blocks!

Honestly, these blocks are so pretty just as floor confetti, but the whole point of quilting is to make an actual quilt, so we moved on to the next steps and put this buddy up on the wall.

Sashing and cornerstones will get added between each block and row, so nothing will end up touching in the final layout. In addition, each fabric is only used in each position one time, so there is no danger of like fabrics touching. But laying it out helps 1) get the block orientation correct, and 2) helps balance color and tone. We moved things around until we were happy with the balance of everything, checked roughly one million times to make sure we turned the blocks correctly....aaaaaand we missed two blocks! In the above photos, you can see that our two blocks in the bottom left corner are rotated incorrectly, so it's easy to miss! We fixed it after the photos were taken. After that, we added the sashing and sewed the final seams together.

And this is where the magic really happens...

We were thrilled with how this came out in the end. The gingham as a background was definitely a gamble, but it certainly paid off. This is why we say, "No Boring Neutrals"!

Now, for a peak behind the curtain, most of our MOTM's get hung neatly in their unfinished state for a few (ahem) months while we move on to other projects and wait to decide what we will ultimately do with them. Nova was no exception, but as we were gearing up for our studio move this month, we started sending more of them out to get their finishing touches from Emily at So Sunny Quilts. Nova not only got her time to shine, but became the very first quilt to have her photoshoot in our new studio!