Guess What I Finished?

That's right, I finally finished the ten stars that are going to be a part of the border for my 12 Days of Christmas, FQS BOM quilt.

The tricky part about these blocks was matching the point where the white points met near the center of the star.  Because the white pieces were at different angles, I couldn't just line them up and sew 1/4" seam.  I had to slightly overlap one over the other.  Let's just say I became friendly with my seam ripper while piecing these.  After I pieced the entire block, I realized that it actually looked cool when some of the blue points were cut off because it gave the block a more random look, which is the look that I think the block is going for, so I actually did it on purpose on some of the blocks.  It's so counter-intuitive to cut off points that I tried to make perfect, but I like the effect.

Christmas Quilt Border

Well, the bug that's been going around finally hit me last week.  I'm finally starting to feel better and have begun to get back into some sewing.  I spent several days in bed doing nothing, feeling so blah.  I'm glad to be back on my feet, although not 100% just yet.

To get back into the swing of things, I've begun working on the 10 stars for the Christmas Quilt border.

This required making 40 of each of the above rectangles for the 10 squares. I made all of them and am in the process of sewing all of these together to form the star tips.

Here you can see the stars starting to take shape.  I have about 2/3 of the star points finished. Once I finish those I can make the stars and assemble the border to FINISH the quilt top.  Whoo Hoo.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for four fat quarters in my previous post.  The winner will be announced next Monday.

Simply Radiant BOM - January

As I was preparing to teach the BMQG paper piecing, I was looking for just the right pattern that didn't have too many pieces, needed to be pieced together to show how to join two paper pieced blocks, and had different angles to show how to take care in lining up the fabrics.  I decided on the January BOM from Carol Doak's Simply Radiant Star BOM.  I hadn't made this block, but it appeared to be the easiest block out of the bunch.  It would be perfect.

Here's my finished block.  I really like how it came out.  As I was preparing and picking out fabrics I decided that I needed a block with red as the dominant color.  I think this works well.

Here are all seven blocks so far.  See why I thought I needed another block with red as the focus color?

I put this aside for a while, but I'm going to TRY to pick it back up again and get a few more blocks done.  All of the patterns have been posted for the quilt, I just need to finish them all. 

My First Paper Pieced Quilt

Here's a picture of my first paper pieced quilt.  It's probably one of my favorite if not my absolute favorite quilt that I've made.  The blocks are from Carol Doak's 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars.  I took a class about 3-4 years ago at Quilter's Way in Concord, MA in learning how to paper piece.  We were only supposed to make one block, but I absolutely loved the colors and the block, so I made another 8 stars.  This was the first color combo that I made in the class.  You can see a close up of the border fabric, which was the inspiration for the colors that I used.  
After loving how everything was turning out, I made a block in this color combo. Two blocks turned into 3, then 4, then 5... I just couldn't stop I was loving how everything came out.  

Enjoy...