Another Project

As I said in my last post, we've been quite busy around here but I needed to spend some time with my sewing machine, just to keep my sanity. Sewing really does help me relax, stay calm, and regroup when things are getting a bit out of control. 

I decided that I needed to sew something that is pretty mindless, so I took a look at my many UFOs. I very quickly decided that there are a number of projects that need to stay right where they are. Now is not the time to work on them. For a couple of those project, there may never be a time to work on them, but that's a whole other issue.  

I finally decided that since I'm teaching another Plays Well with Others class in January, and I had a bunch of those blocks already made, that I'd make a new sample. Easy Peasy!

Unlike the first version of this quilt, there is no rhyme or reason to the placement of the strips in this quilt. I simply picked up a strip, decided if it had enough contrast with the one next to it, and then sewed, pressed, and pulled the next strip. No heavy duty thinking needed, and that's exactly what I wanted.

I used the same fabric for the pieces that create the star, so that was easy!

This was fabric that was left over from another project and was perfect to use when I've taught this class previously. No matter what class I teach, I like to make "step-out units" to demonstrate the process of each step. For this quilt, using a light colored fabric made it easy for students to see the markings they would be making. 

By the time I completed all the partial blocks (step-out units) I had enough to put the blocks on the design wall. 

For this quilt, putting the blocks together was pretty simple. I just didn't want two of the same fabrics next to each other and I wanted some contrast between them. Basically, I just put up blocks and then moved them around as needed. 

It is a little deceiving how these blocks are made. You don't start out by making star blocks. Instead, each star block is constructed from four individual "kite" blocks. Sorry! I didn't take a picture of an individual "kite" block when I was making this quilt. Here's a very bad picture from another version that I'm making. 

Once I decided on the final layout, I sewed four "kite" blocks together into stars and then sewed the star blocks together. Again...easy peasy. And guess what...the star points purposely don't have to be matched up perfectly. Yay! 

In an attempt to keep the star points in tact, I purposely "floated" them. That means that the intersection looks like a hot mess up close, but since there are so many fabrics converging here (8 different fabrics), you really don't notice it when the quilt is done. 

It felt good to put this quilt together. I like it and have a couple other versions of it in the works. :-)