Felt Star

I saw a variation of these on Flickr, with a link to this tutorial. I immediately wanted to make some as Christmas ornaments, but I decided to try it first with felt. It's just a pentagon within a pentagon. I was debating just gluing down the orange, but I decided to embellish it a bit with stitches instead. Now, I think I might just make some more with felt!

Jelly Roll Disappointment

Back in May, I bought a jelly roll for $5. I'm glad I didn't spend more than that, because it definitely wasn't worth it. There were 2 strips each of 10 different fabrics. Jelly rolls are supposed to be 2.5" wide. I don't know if it's all jelly rolls, or just the one I bought, but the measurements on this one were severely lacking. All the strips were about 42" long, but most were not uniformly 2.5" wide. I noticed right away that one print tapered off, but the same problem occurred on several others that I didn't notice until now. Even on the ones that didn't taper severely were only 2 3/8" in some spots.

I decided not to use the butterfly fabric, so that left me with eighteen 42" strips. I was cutting 5" rectangles, so I should have been able to cut 16 rectangles from each print, or 8 from each strip, for a total of 144 rectangles. I ended up with 77. I was able to cut a full 16 from only 2 prints. Two prints only yielded 3, and 2 others yielded only 4.

The one I didn't use, the too narrow pile, and the actual rectangles:

At least I'll have a lot of scraps for the back or another project.

If I cut 15 rectangles from each of these 5 fabrics, I'll make up the difference that I need.

Fortunately I had a decent number of fabrics that coordinate. I just hope they blend well enough.

Pink Star Quilt

It is finally done! I started these star blocks last October, so at least I finished in under a year.

The quilt top

The back
More star blocks
Mini star blocks
Lightning bolt blocks
Pattern for the lightning bolt block

Finished size: 42"x52"

Star blocks based on this tutorial.
Pattern for the lightning bolt block.

Weekend Progress

I had the unprecedented opportunity to take a Friday off, so I did, and a Monday too. I got more reading done than quilting, but I did make some good headway.

I put together the backing for the star quilt and got it pinned together:

I only had a yard of the black star fabric, which wasn't enough, so I had to improvise to finish it without buying any more fabric. It could definitely look better, but I'm content.

I also decided on a layout for my first Quilt Block Project quilt:

This is quite an achievement, since there are so many fabulous blocks to choose from, which was causing extreme indecision.

Of course, I originally intended to work on my crazy nine patch layouts. That'll be next on the list.

Finished Star Quilt.

Zack's Quilt

 

I finally finished it! It only took me about 2 years. I purchased the flame fabric back in February of 2009. I know I'd already cut up the t-shirts at that point, probably in 2008. The back is orange flannel, which makes it very soft with flannel on the back and t-shirts on the front. I've only used flannel to back one other quilt, but I rather like it. I actually only bought the flannel because it was on sale and it was orange. It's a combination of high school and college shirts, but since Zack is a much more enthusiastic alumni of Clemson, I went with an orange theme.

Finished size: 47"x56"