North Star

I have several projects awaiting quilting, and a king-sized quilt project waiting to be started (more on that soon, I hope!), but my Janome Horizon has been in intensive care for the past two weeks so I have had to entertain myself with other crafty things.

There has been some knitting.

There has been some stitching of individual blocks for the Farmer's Wife QAL, using my Singer Featherweight.

But one day last week I was seized by an uncontrollable urge to cut up fabric, and at that point I did not yet have all the goods at hand to make a start on the king-sized quilt project. Soooo, on a whim (and before I had much time to think it through) I decided to jump on board the "Made in Cherry" QAL, using Sarah Fielke's beautiful design (a free download from Lecien Japan) for a GIGANTIC patchwork star. 

One of my goals this year is to make full use of my fabric stash, and I had been wanting to do something with all the pale blues I have collected...here was my chance!

One morning I spent a couple of hours piecing the eight star points, and I choose a blue solid for the background fabric.  I would have love to use a midnight blue shot cotton I have, but I don't have the 2.5 yds needed for this pattern. Sigh.  This medium blue will do just as well...and, best of all, using it means 2.5 more yards of stash fabric has found its place.

One more sewing session and I had the 100 piece star centre and could get a sense of how the whole thing would look. Ooooo. It's a biggie.

And now I am happy to say that I have the whole top fully pieced.  I am going to call this "North Star" in honour of its icy tones and the several snowflake patterns I used (including a couple of the pale blue Christmas/winter prints from Happy Zombie...I love those and am so glad to have found a way to use them in a quilt).

It took my two tall boys to hold this for a photo.  It is 80 x 80 and really should be on a bed somewhere, ultimately. 

I just found out that my Janome will be ready to come home next week -- repaired (hooray for the 2-year warrantee!) and cleaned.  So the quilting of North Star will have to wait for a while.  Into the queue it goes.

Happy stitching, everyone!