Ok, so I wasn't intending on taking such an extended break. Or really, any break at all. But life happened, in a good way! I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but my brother got engaged a few months ago and my future sister in law asked me to be a bridesmaid. And she needed to go dress shopping because their wedding is this summer. So that took up some valuable weekend sewing time (aside from it also being nice outside which also cut into sewing time). But then, the end of May, my boyfriend proposed, so wedding planning took center stage of all my free time, but I think we have all the big things taken care of so planning will calm down for a few months. So while I am extremely happy and excited, I think I did maybe 2 hours of sewing in the last 2 months. But I will probably end up disappearing again for at least a month early next year.
But I'm back! I turned on my sewing machine for the first time in weeks on Monday. And I have two finished quilts this week to show for it. First, I finished Rising Stars. I wanted to call this one Shooting Stars, but because I released this one as a quilt pattern, and auto bots can be dumb, I was afraid the shooting part would somehow be flagged by Etsy. So a rename was needed.
Rising Stars has no planned recipient. It was inspired by the piece of brown flannel in the middle that was a remnant I picked up somewhere, most likely Joann's. The blue and the green came from my stash, those were also leftover pieces from another project or also remnants. I tend to pick up any solid remnants I see when I'm fabric shopping, mainly because I don't gravitate towards them but they do come in handy. Even the polka dot came from my stash, though I did need to go back to Hobby Lobby to get an extra quarter yard because that's how much I was short.
So this was almost a true stash buster for me. I did buy backing, I don't have a lot of large pieces of fabric that I can use as backings. Most of my fabric is about a yard or less, but the binding came from my stash! As did the batting. This was a true frankenbatting because I'm pretty sure there are at least a dozen strips sewn into it. Which also explains the dense quilting. I didn't want any of it to move or bunch up if possible.
Then, yesterday, I finished Joy's Stars. At least that's what I'm calling it. I believe the pattern is actually Ohio Stars and Courthouse Steps, but that's a mouthful and a lot to write on a tag. I did omit a few stars so I could use pieces of a panel that I had (also a remnant). I had a handful of fat quarters that I loved together and I wasn't sure what to use them in until I saw this pattern.
Joy's Stars is for my friend and massage therapist, Joy. And the original plan before I got sidetracked by wedding planning, was to give this to her as a housewarming gift. All I need to do was put the border on (already cut) and quilt and bind it. I had the backing, the batting, and the binding fabric, it was just put on hold and will now be two months late. But I can't wait to give it to her when I see her in a few weeks.
I love the striped binding I used and it was only after sewing down the third side that I realized that since it wasn't a random stripe like I normally use when I use a striped binding, that it would be noticeable where I joined the two pieces since the pattern would repeat weird. As you can probably imagine, I squealed a little bit with delight when I got to the point of needing to join the ends because the pattern lines up perfectly. As do all the other joins, but I planned those that way. This wasn't planned, just a happy accident!
So what's up next? I think I want to finish quilting Good Fortune so I can take that one off my plate and I'm sure there will be some hand quilting going on again now that we're in the dog days of summer and it's not quite so nice to want to be outside. But also, because my schedule changed at work for the summer, I won't have as much quilting time as I did last year so things might be a little slow going. Maybe I'll work on pattern writing in the evenings. I have a few quilts that are already made that I could write up patterns for as well as some I've designed that I need to write the pattern so I can make it. So what have you been up to while I was away?
Happy Quilting!
