Rusty Stars

Two weeks ago I started turning a set of scrappy 6" blocks from my Parts Department into 12" Sawtooth stars for a new quilt for a child in foster care. You can see the blocks I started with in this post. Late last week I finished the flimsy ~ hurray! Let's see if I can give you a succinct recap of the process...

In that first post there were only three 12" blocks. My goal was 20. I'd started with about a dozen 6" blocks to turn into stars, and over the course of making the remaining 17 blocks I also created new 6" blocks to turn into stars. It wasn't long before I had this on the design wall:

By this time I had become worried about the top being boring with such a tightly controlled palette, thus the infusion of a few select blues.

Once I had 20 blocks on the wall in a layout I was happy with I had to decide whether or not to add borders. By themselves the blocks only measured 48" x 60." That felt just a tad small so I auditioned a couple of potential border prints.

My first option was to frame the top with one of the light background prints before putting on a rusty border.

The second option was to eliminate the frame and just go with a single border.

I played with various border widths while I had the yardage pieces up there too. I really wasn't sure which option would win out until I put the potential border fabrics on the wall with the blocks. Then it became an easy choice. And a fairly easy finish!

These are the Parts Dept. blocks I had leftover:

The blue Hole in the Barn Door block was made during construction of the flimsy. The Broken Dishes block next to it may have been as well, I don't precisely remember now.

I used a handful of prints from my early quilt making days to make a back for this top. Didn't get a picture of it though. Guess you'll have to wait and see that when I get the sandwich back from being quilted!