The Latest New Quilt Project

While doing "secret sewing" I can't show you, I am making another quilt at the same time:

This is not the final design placement and there are many more blocks to go, but you get the idea.

The corner triangles are being sewn on as "leader/enders" while making the secret quilt. Easy and it gives me a sense of accomplishment as each star goes from 6" to 9" finished and finds a place on the design wall.

At the first Joyful Journey Retreat, one of the women was working on an old project she was eager to get finished. I really liked it and thought I would want to make one like it someday:

All of April's Sawtooth Star points are the same light off-white fabric and the centers and backgrounds are different fabrics. The sashing and cornerstones tie it all together. I like the wide variety of fabrics very much, especially in the outside perimeter triangles. But when would I have time to start yet another quilt from scratch?

While laying in bed, when I should have been sleeping, I remembered I had 40 6" Sawtooth Star blocks I received in a swap, from Barb Vedder's blog: Oh, My Stars Swap  Perfect!

I "did the math" and decided to cut 80 squares, 6" each, to provide the 160 triangles needed to surround each star. Rather than dig out 80 fabrics, my original plan, I quickly decided to cut 2 each from 40 fabrics, in a wide variety of colors.

Once the four triangles were sewn on the four sides of the star, I pressed them firmly and trimmed the block to 9.5" square. This allows the stars to "float" just a bit. To float them even more, I could have cut those squares larger, say 6.5", 7" or even 7.5". That would make the stars larger. 

Once all the stars are surrounded with triangles and trimmed to 9.5",  I will decide what sashing and cornerstones I want to use. This makes for a larger quilt and gives each star room to shine.

Swaps are notoriously challenging--I have participated in many over the years. Even though Barb's instructions were clear and spot-on, not all of the blocks I received followed those instructions. A few had bias on the background triangles instead of straight-of-grain, and the requirement to use "quilt shop quality muslin" wasn't always followed.

Adding your own fabrics to blocks received in swaps is a good way to control the quality and fix block sizes that are not exactly perfect.

I once participated in a swap of Dear Jane blocks done in Halloween fabrics--fun! It was a big swap with people from several countries and many US states. The person who coordinated it was up-front from the beginning. As she received your blocks, they would be sorted into 5 "quality levels"--A, B, C, D, and E. If you sent in A blocks, you got A blocks in return. If you sent D blocks, that's what you got in return. I can only imagine what any E blocks looked like! I tried hard to be sure I sent in A's.

Here is a poor photo of what I did with those Dear Jane blocks. I gave the quilt away and now cannot find any other photo of it:

My recommendation if you want to create a swap: choose the participants wisely, be sure all agree to follow whatever the rules are, and be sure everyone understands the rules. Also set a time requirement that allows adequate time but not too much time--most will do their blocks right at the deadline.

Let's quilt.

Barbara