In spite of having what felt like extremely limited time in my sewing room this month I actually accomplished quite a bit. I'm very happy to report that I have converted the piles of Starlite Skies blocks into a top, so I am four for four on my OMG projects!
It still needs to be pressed and there are a thousand threads to pick off of it - that sashing fabric was really stringy - but other than that it is ready for quilting. I would have liked it to be a bit wider - it's currently right at 90"- but decided to exclude the optional border as it is already 106" long. I really hate super long quilts since all of our beds have footboards. My husband suggested bucking convention and adding borders to the sides only but I am pretty sure that would be too much for my symmetry-loving OCD brain to handle!
I haven't decided how I am going to quilt this one. I feel like it needs to be custom rather than an edge-to-edge design, but I have no idea how to quilt those blocks. It might be a while before I load it on the longarm.
This weekend I finished blocks 89 & 90 for Triangle Gatherings. I had only prepped enough HSTs to get to block 90 since that was the original number Lisa had thrown out for the total. I spent a little time in EQ over the weekend and figured out a nice setting that will work with what I have so I decided to skip the last 9 blocks. I have a black fabric that will be perfect for setting this one but will need a few more yards of it so I will be searching for that this week.
I also finished my last Magic of Chrismas block over the weekend. I had been putting this one off because of the teeny tiny triangles - the little HSTs are 1/2" finished.
As always my photos are terrible - the lighting in my house is not ideal for photography, apparently. The actual color of my background fabric is somewhere between the block above and the picture below. Anyway, I saw an absolutely gorgeous version of this quilt in Paducah with wool applique in the center and border and have decided to use a similar setting. This layout uses 42 blocks. I thought about going larger since I have 49 blocks, but once I figured out that I would need to make more to maintain symmetry it was easy to decide to just orphan a few. My design wall isn't quite large enough so this is a bit sloppy, but here's the idea. (Now that I see the photo I see a couple of blocks that need to be moved...)
This will be a bit challenging to piece since some of the more elaborate pieced blocks are a little larger than they are supposed to be....apparently my seam is a little too scant...but I am determined to get it together. I'm a little frightened of trying to applique after quilting but the one in Paducah was so fantastic that I feel like I want to give it a shot. I still need to come up with my applique design and figure out the quilting so this will be another one that takes a while.
I'm linking up with Elm Street Quilts to share my April OMG finish and now need to decide what I want to choose as a focus project for May. Obviously it should be the one above, but there are a few others calling my name...
