sherbet stars

This is my first finished quilt of 2010. I'm calling it sherbet stars...I started the stars when Block Party introduced the friendship star block back in November. I saw that they were planning on introducing the next block on February 1st, so figured I better get a move on finishing it!

The sherbet part comes from the colors which came from a quilt bundle from Fabricworm which I blogged about here.

I did very little quilting. From the get-go with this one I knew I wanted to simply outline each star. I thought I might add more, but as I got closer and closer to finishing, I chose to leave it with just that much.

For the back I used a Kona solid in Apricot and the binding is Celery I believe. I also added a strip bordered by the white muslin used on the front. Each square in the strip is a print used in the stars on the front, with the exception of the green centers.

I love love love how this quilt turned out. Part of it is probably the fact that it's my first non-square patchwork quilt. But it was not without it's challenges for me. And I'm not gonna sugar-coat it and gloss over that. I think that's part of craft-blogging. We don't always get it right and we aren't always without our share of challenges. So, where do I begin?

First off, the only thing I don't like about heavily pieced blocks is the bulk you end up with in the seams. So, I think I'm learning to like pressing down the center of seams. Also, I LOVE the color and softness of the bleached white muslin in the finished product, but I do not like piecing with it. I think it's really thin, stretches too easily and creates problems in that way. And finally, I had a problem on the binding of this one. I've never gotten totally and completely done with a quilt only to realize I missed about a 3" to 4" strip on the front where the binding missed the quilt top! And there's nothing like getting totally and completely done with a quilt top, finding an issue like that to totally and completely deflate you. But life goes on! So, in all honesty, I haven't fixed it yet. It should be a quick fix since it's only that small section, but after looking at it yesterday I just had to put it down, and WALK AWAY....know what I mean?

My next quilt is going to be for Noah. What happened to the quilt I planned for Christmas you ask? Oh - well, that's a looonnnnggggg story. Quilt is still in progress. I want something quick and fast and easy so that's what the next one will be! But I have so many other quilts I want to do this year....a zig zag quilt, I have the entire lines of Nicey Jane and Hope Valley to use. I want to do Oh Fransson's Paintbox Square quilt (in two versions).....the list goes on. Back to quilting!