Orchard Stars - the Scrappy Liberty + Speckled one

July 17, 2025

Today I am sharing one of my most favorite makes from 2024. We had such a huge surge of inspiration in the spring of 2024 that we made SO MANY QUILTS. Here is the line up from that time:

From left to right, we have finally blogged about every single one of these quilts:

The Orchard Stars Quilt Pattern combines two of my favorite classic quilting designs - a Courthouse Step and a Sawtooth Star. Now, this design puts a spin on both of them as the Courthouse Step block is made as patchwork and then the Sawtooth Stars are offset in the block to float perfectly between the columns of courthouse steps. The pattern includes six sizes, two design styles, and scrap charts to use your stash! This is an advanced beginner design; it would be perfect for someone who already sews but hasn't done a quilt yet or for someone who has made 1 or 2 quilts so far and wants a little more of a challenge.

We have made seven Orchard Stars quilt so far since we released this design in May of 2024! Here are the five (!) quilts we made for the release:

Hanging from left to read, you can read all about each one here:

Orchard Stars - the Lakeside one
Orchard Stars - the Satsuma one
Orchard Stars - the Cover one - this one has all the inspiration behind the design including one of my favorite places on Earth
Orchard Stars - the Sierra one
Orchard Stars - the Scrappy Baby one

And finally, we made a classic black and white scrappy Orchard Stars right before making this Liberty and Speckled one. You can see it below and read about it here.

I actually had pulled fabric for both the quilt above (the black and white) and the Liberty + Speckled quilt I'm sharing today at the same time. And I knew I wanted to make both so we did! Back in February of 2024, I went to QuiltCon in Raleigh, NC and Duckadilly Fabrics had a booth with so many gorgeous curated bundles of Liberty of London fabrics. I grabbed a bundle of Neon Tana Lawn prints in - I think; it was a while ago - Fat Sixteenths.

Also, at the time Ruby Star Society had announced new Speckled colors to be launched in the fall of 2024. I luckily got early access to a charm pack of the new colors in the spring. And when I saw them together, I was like YEP, I gotta figure out how to make something with these...but I had two problems.

Problem One - The new Speckled colors were only 5" squares and I didn't have enough fabric for an entire sawtooth star.

Problem Two - I had no idea what background fabric would complement the neon florals and bright Speckleds but also not take away from them. Solids felt too stark. Prints felt too busy.

I was able to solve Problem One by using the new Speckled fabrics only for the star points and using an existing neon pink speckled for each of the centers of the stars. I also loved that it made the stars seem to float even more in the quilt top.

Then Problem Two was solved by my friend and studio assistant Christy. She said "Meghan, you talk about being a little crazy and leaning into chaos. What about using one of these thin stripe linens from Fabelism we have on hand?" And I was like HOT DIGGITY DOG!! You are a genius!!

So now that I had both problems solved, I jumped right in!

I mean, COME ON, these fabrics are so spectacular together. I was only a tad nervous about the stripe background being too distracting but I knew as long as I was able to keep my stripes going the same direction (horizontal) throughout the entire top, we would be okay. And you'll come to see, it worked out perfectly.

All the Liberty squares on the left are for the courthouse steps blocks, the speckled squares are for the star points, the larger speckled squares are the star centers, then all the background cuts and the far right pile are my Liberty scraps.

These were my first blocks to make sure I could make this all happen. Between the stripe background and the sawtooth star changes, I needed to be sure it would work out before going into chain piecing town. The one Liberty fabric I used from my stash is the deep yellow and white floral that I used for the center of every courthouse step block. And then the other one fabric I was very mindful of spreading out in each block is the dark purple one. I didn't want to accidentally end up using it in the same spot in every block.

I didn't take any photos of the actually sewing because I think I was in chain piecing heaven and thoroughly enjoyed making these blocks. Here are all the courthouse step blocks!

The courthouse step blocks are separated by full blocks and side blocks in the pattern. I love love love them. The pops of neon are so fun and I also love the colors and low saturation levels of some. YUMMM. And the stripes are a subtle complement that really add some soft support to the busyness of the florals.

Now, let's look at all the stars!

The little pops of color are really fun. Now here are all the blocks together.

The final lay out of these blocks are somewhat defined before even going up on the design wall. There are specific top row blocks and edge blocks. Now from there, you do have a little freedom to move them around within their constraints. So let's see what layout we landed on up on our design wall!

So the main thing again I focused on was making sure those dark purple Liberty neon prints were spread out as much as I could. As you can see, they are easy for the eye to immediately be drawn to. I felt like I sprinkled them in as randomly as I could without being intentional from the very start per block. I also tried to spread out the star colors, making sure not all the pinks and purples were in one spot, or all the blues.

I moved blocks around quite a bit until I landed on the lay out that felt the best and then sewed it all together! I did remember to stop to photograph all the rows when they were assembled.

Now time to sew the rows together!

This quilt is sophisticated, happy, joyful, a little princess vibes, youthful and I love her.

A bright vintage inspired beauty is probably a great way to describe this lady.

We decided to back this quilt in Speckled Polar from Ruby Star Society and bound it in a Kitchen Window Wovens fabric from Robert Kaufman. Emily of So Sunny Quilts did the quilting and we chose the Floral Panel by Sew Shabby Quilting for the pantograph.