Tiny little star blocks

Little bitty, tiny and cute.  And before you comment, no - the seam isn't supposed to intersect the point of the V between the star points, and yes - there is supposed to be space between the star points and the edge of the blocks.  I read the instructions twice.

These little stars finish out at 4 1/2", so they are fiddly and tedious to make.  But I think they're adorable.

O what a quilt

Playing with some more charm squares today.  These little "O" blocks went together surprisingly quickly.  I have more matching charm squares and can't decide whether to make the quilt larger or leave it at this.  When joined and bordered it will be a 32" square wall quilt.

Playing with charm packs

One thing I found in the stash closet when I cleaned out recently were several pairs of charm packs.  I don't even remember when I bought them, they're that old.  One was "Origins" and the other was "Punctuation", if I remember correctly.  Neither is something that is exactly my style but they were fun to work with because of the variety.

I was working with a pattern in the book "Another Bite of Schnibbles".  I just love Carrie Nelson's small quilts!  I started making a small quilt named "Nash" and, don't you know, I messed it up.

Do you see what I did?  Look at the center blocks.  I was listening to the news on the radio and neglected to make sure that I cut the strippy blocks in half all the same way to made those triangles surrounding the pieced blocks.  I was crushed!  I put it together anyway and I guess it works somewhat, but I could kick myself.  I have the center assembled and I'll add the borders tomorrow.

So I wanted to make one correctly.  I cut out the same pattern in the second charm pack set, and had enough to make it rectangular instead of square.  This time I didn't mess it up.

Outer border will go on in the morning.  Notice that the center strippy blocks are right this time.  Sometimes you just have to smack your forehead and go "Stupid!"

Design dilemma

I fell in love with this design from Kim Brackett's "Scrap Basket Sensations":

 and remembered that I had yardage of a brown monoprint and scraps from the "Buttercup" and "Fresh Cottons" collections from previous projects.  During the first week of the Orca Bay mystery, I made 16 blocks for the center of the quilt and through the weeks added 20 more for a 6 x 6 layout.  Then I ran out of fabric.  I wanted it larger so I bought a jelly roll of "Buttercup" on sale online and made 28 more blocks to finish the designed size:

Here it is with the blocks laid out in order.  Before I start joining the rows I wanted to decide if there was something else I could do to make the quilt larger.  I have more 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" scraps of the colors and plenty of the brown, so I'm thinking about adding a 2" brown border and then a 4" picket-style multicolor border with the brown triangles added to the outer tips to make the pickets.  Perhaps then finish it up with another 2" brown border.  What do you think?

I also thought about a 2" border between the outer and second concentric rows, and made up the difference in the length by adding two 2" brown strips between the 2nd/3rd and 6th/7th blocks, which looked good on paper but not in person.  I scratched that idea.

Or should I let well enough alone?  I would like the quilt to be a little bigger.  My picket border would size it up from 64" square to 80" square.  It would also be a lot of work, making those 128 pickets plus the corner blocks.  I'll have to look at my scraps again and see if I have enough before thinking further

Working small

Man, I'm getting right crazy in my old age.  The Animas Quilts mystery design, according to their website, is built on a 1 1/4" grid.  I think that even outdoes Bonnie Hunter because the last few mysteries from her only had 1 1/2" finished HSTs.  Furthermore, I'm in the process of making about 300  1 1/4" HSTs  (1 3/4" including seam allowances).  And as I make them, I'm squaring up every one.  Yes, you heard me right.  Every one.  I may only be slivering off a thread or two on each side, but when you have pieces that small, those threads tend to add up, and thus you have to be even more careful about size.

So I sew 20, press 20, de-dog ear 20 and then trim 20.  It's slow going.

Sweet mystery of life....

.....or at least of quilting.  Is anyone doing the Animas Quilts mystery?  I waffled because I have done so many mystery quilts recently but at last caved in because I found a lovely green and white toile vine print at the local quilt shop, Chattanooga Quilts, that would be a good background fabric.  Since this pattern evidently has a lot of the background showing based on the amount of yardage specified, it figures that the background should be special. And this one is:

It's from the Contessa line from RJR and it's wonderful.  I'm substituting rust for the reds in the mystery quilt due to stash restrictions but otherwise following the color guidelines from Animas.

So I'm buzzing along making HSTS of toile/gold and toile/rust this morning, catching up on the January clue.  Only 234 to go!  

Quiltbug.com Superbowl Sunday mystery quilt. . .

.   .   .more or less.  I made a minor change with the sashing and the corner triangles to make those little starry crosses at the sashing intersections.  Pretty cute design.  The brown diamonds are machine appliqued with fusible and a small machine blanket stitch.  I never liked that method because old fusible was so stiff but Steam a Seam 2 is much lighter and more flexible.  All in all, a pretty good lap quilt.