The star adventure part 5

so here we are at the last set of blocks in the series,

I think there may have been one or two patterns more but honestly I'm stared out.

Time to put them all together. Funny thing, I made 18 blocks all together and it turns out I've enough blocks for two whole quilts!

so off we go to the fabric store to find enough material to finish the sashings and then I'll worry about the backing and binding.

I wish I could have done a better job matching the corners on this one

But as I discussed before I had a limited amount of fabric to work with and as I predicted one mistake and you end up with not enough to finish a block.

Well I finish this one but had to monkey with the corners so they are way off, P-hoo!

The star adventure part 4

And again, Not quite the look I was going for in block one but getting better.


I would have helped if I had had some goldish star fabric bUt no. ad no I am not going out and buying more!

I'm very proud of myself, all the quilts Ive completed in the last year have been from my scrap bin and yet there is more.......

My goal is to buy as little fabric as possible and then just for finishing purposes like the back, sashing or bindings.


so far so good!

This one was fin to do as its constructed with all HST's
(half square triangles)

but a real challenge to keep straight while putting together

For my piecing wall I tend to use the louvered curtains in the front room where my sewing stuff is.

This is handy because I can fold and unfold them as needed to the full length of the sliding doors

which is a hundred inches + wide so I can easily do a king size quilt up there, it would just drag on the floor a bit.

The other nice thing is the morning sun does wonderful things to quilt blocks.
I'm almost tempted to make  a curtain for it, almost.

star adventure part 3

So these are the next few blocks in the challenge.                                                           the larger blocks in this series are the first ones tried  and so are a little off.                                                                            I'm learning more about that whole  don't put too many busy fabrics together thing.

                      It's the difference between a muddy looking block and a crisp block.                                                                   In the two blocks I made smaller you can see each fabric even though the picture is half the size.

Also tones were important here, I thOught I was going the graduating colors rout but that was not where I ended up.
They are still nice serviceable blocks but not the clear crisp outlines I was going for.

The star adventure

You may remember this pile of fat quarters fro the last post


but I need a refresher on how all this silliness started

so back to the beginning I go

I have since used all those fabrics (yay!)

and am now putting the whole blessed mess together

Ive had fun with this project,

I find it interesting how you can make the same pattern do different things by changing the color, tone or pattern of fabric

and finding out what works well together and what does not and what just looks like a hot mess might be mitigated by the border you put around it


I also didn't follow their directions exactly,

as you will notice, if you care to go to the site, there is a lot of waste and overcutting in her directions. so I took short cuts.

Mostly because I had a limited supply of my focus fabrics and one mistake,

like cutting a quarter inch to small or wide meant I might not have enough of a fabric to finish a block

So I did a lot of re calculating to use my stash to its best advantage.

The most used techniques in this whole challenge are flying gees and Half square triangles so once you have a good grounding in those ( a chart doesn't hurt) you're off an running

Adventures in sanity

As you all know I have been taking a break from crazy quilting,
Its not a permanent on just a cleansing, as it were.

I feel the need to have projects to do that can be finished quickly, mostly to keep my mind busy on things other than news, which I've switched off. For those that know me well that is a BIG deal as I am an itinerant newsie and have been since high school.

I'm still working on slow stitching and have several projects in the works but I'm a little brain fried with them right now so they will dribble in slowly as I get around to them.

I find it best to set things aside and work on something else when that muse has left the building, rather than trying to force it along or worse yet, let it sit there and stare at me, mocking my inability to create.

So instead I have taken on the NQS 9week quilt block challenge

looks like its going to be a fun quilt to make

It's much bigger blocks than I'm used to working on but I'm seeing the benefits to the larger format

the finished quilt if you follow the 9 block model
is 60"x60

but I want a bed size quilt so my first challenge is to make 2 of each block then pick 4 extras to make it long enough for a queen size bed.



my second challenge is to use as much of my star fabric stash as possible,



its mostly fat quarters with a few 1/2 yards mixed in so far so good

Blocks 2 and 3 have turned out spectacular!

Every thing I could wish for

nice defined points no missing ends or offset panels

notice how I said 2 and 3

Block one was, nice, bUt

was 2 whole inches to small, each finished block should be 16", this one was 14" NG

the pints were mostly fine but wonky in the crotches.

aaand the middle star has almost no definition between colors and so reads like a square at a distance, instead of a star.

Foo!

and I followed the directions too! Double foo!

so I took my stars destiny into my own hands and resorted to my comfort zone for making flying geese, instead of the stated directions

and it worked! whee!