Oh My Stars and Garters!

Welcome to the first day of the Wish Upon a Star Quilt Hop, hosted by our beautiful and talented Carol of Just Let Me Quilt.

The Rules were so simple:  Your project must have a star somewhere on it.  It can be a star block, a star applique, or star shaped purse..whatever.  It can be big or small. As long as it has a star, you're in!

I thought wow this is super simple and easy for me I already had a star quilt in the works!  So of course I joined!  

The quilt started over a year ago as a Bag Lady Quilt with my quilt guild.  You can read all about it here.   I had my blocks returned to me in December at the Guild Christmas Party. I am surprised I never posted about my blocks when they were returned.  I truly do have extenuating circumstances and I will admit writing this post has caused many tears while looking back through the past 15 months of posts. 

Now the problem is what do you do with nine 9 1/2 inch quilt blocks?  They aren't enough to do a whole lot with.  Then I saw a pattern by Heather Jones called Ohio Supernova and it solved my problem.  Well kind of......I knew I didn't have enough of my original fabrics so I went hunting to find something that may match.

Original fabric

 I found this fabulous license plate fabric! 

Blue and white stars, and I had just enough of the red I thought I could make it.  I made one more 9 1/2 inch block.  Then went to work on the Ohio Supernova quilt.  

I made a few changes.  I added a narrow blue border around the large star.   I then added some sashing between my blocks to make them fit the width of the Ohio Supernova star and sashing.  I used a red star fabric from the initial group of fabrics which were in the bag. 

I had just enough of the red star which I used in the sashing to make a border around the quilt.  Truly this quilt went together so easily I knew something was going to end up going wrong, you know Murphy's Law?

I decided to be lazy and go to JAF for the backing.

I purchased more than enough.  But I wanted to use the blue stars so I inserted a strip. 

I quilted it with big loops and primitive stars.

Trimmed it up and had it ready to go.  I made binding out of the blue stars and had just enough and I figured I would sew on the binding while I was on my trip.  I had another quilt for the X Blocks Blog hop to finish first so this one was put aside, and went on the journey too.

Then the problems started.  I forgot to bring blue thread.  Being on the reservation-- it is about 70 miles away from the nearest town.....but I managed to kill 2 birds with one stone.  I needed to have my car serviced, needed to buy wedding shower gifts so I also hit the local quilt shop in town that day too..  Unfortunately the only blue she had was a variegated 40 wt.  I thought heck that will work so I bought it.  

Went to sew the binding and had a wee bit of a problem.  There were a couple of places that the fabric had torn.  Now this is not a lightweight fabric, it has a nice thread count and a great hand.  But I had no other option than to just work it out.

The quilt went back into the bag, and I pulled it out when I reached my mother's house in Portland, Oregon.  First thing to deal with was the huge set of tears along the side.  My solution?  Find some fabric and sew a long patch over it.  I would worry about the small tear later.

See my patch.  The fabric had little tears like the one above for about 10 inches down the side, I didn't notice when I was cutting or laying out.  My patch covered it though.

Next I put my binding on.  I have never had so many problems sewing on binding in my life.  I would not catch the top, or the backing, or it would go wonky, or it would wrinkle.  I tore out the binding and pinned and resewed it too many times to count.  Finally I got it on, the first and only time I got it all joined without any hiccups!  I looked in my mom's sewing things for a navy blue thread.  Nope none. Friday the 11th we went to a quilt show.  What are the chances that none of the vendors had any thread?  Seriously?    Off to JAF, I bought a well known brand of thread from them at $6 a spool, and I started hand stitching my binding down.  I will say I missed the Aurifil.  I fought this thread constantly.  It  would hang up, knot, I could only stitch for about 1/2 an hour before I would have to put the quilt down due to the frustration. 

I planned on stitching on it when I stopped for the night while driving back from Oregon.  That didn't work out too well, and to top it off, a coffee cup flipped out of the garbage can I had in my car and spilled coffee, yep you guessed it across the white.  Don't look too close I am sure you will be able to see it in the picture since it hasn't been laundered yet. 

I finally finished the binding, and tying off the quilting threads and burying them late Saturday, May 19, 2018.  Of course Sunday was a super cloudy day.  But it is done, except for a label, and fixing the one other small tear. Then I will wash it with a a bunch of color catchers and hope the coffee comes out.  I am a wee bit reticent about washing it seeing those little tears appear.  I think a small applique patch will suffice.  Or maybe I should make a label using my new embroidery machine and put over it?

I have decided I am naming this quilt Oh My Stars and Garters because of how much trouble it gave me at the end.

Now head on over to see the other great projects that the others have made. 

May 21

Moose Stash Quilting

Tu-Na Quilts, Travels, and Eats

Quilt In A Not-Shell

What About Rheema?

Clever Chameleon Quilting

Sunlight in Winter Quilts

Life in the Scrapatch

Sew Many Yarns

Hazel’s Daughter

May 22

Want To Be Quilter

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Selina Quilts

Ridge Top Quilt

Creative Blonde

Days Filled With Joy

Seams To Be Sew

Lily Patch Quilts

Why-Knot-Kwilt

May 23

Marjorie's Busy Corner

Quilt Doodle Designs

Adventurous Applique and Quilting

Vroomans Quilts

Peanut's Patchwork

Ms P Designs USA

The Little Mushroom Cap

Stitchin At Home

That Fabric Feeling

May 24

Kathy’s Quilts

It’s A T-Sweet Day!

Freckled Fox Quiltery

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Melva Loves Scraps

Beaquilter

Quilting Nonnie

Den syende himmel

All Thingz Sewn

May 25

Creatin' in the Sticks

For the love of geese

Words & Stitches

Quarter Inch Crafter

Quilt Fabrication

Home Sewn By Us

Kathleen McMusing

                                                                 Just Let Me Quilt