New Star

Today I'm working on a project with Nine Patch Stars that I saw on Pat Sloan's YouTube video. Pat's quilt is on her design wall behind her and it's so attractive that I wanted to try it. I Googled her name and a description of the block which took me to her friend's blog, Carole of From My Carolina Home, where there is a free PDF pattern to print out.

I wanted to use scraps for this project, because I was going to be using a lot of purple, the RSC color for August. This is the first time I've tried a larger project all from scraps and I was surprised to find that I had lots of very dark purple and very little light purple. So, doing it all from scraps was a bit of a challenge. My purple scrap piles are more even in the picture because it was taken after I had cut the pieces needed for the project. I used up most of the dark purple and as much of the light purple as I could, filling in with medium purple.

Before I started cutting fabric, I wanted to decide the best use of the purple to make the star points pop. I did a couple of sketches of the block and got my colored pencils out. Option one used the dark fabric as the center of the stars. Seemed to me that too much intense color was concentrated in the center of the block. 

Option two used the dark fabric as the background to the star points. I was leaning toward option two but asked my good friend Kathy what she thought would work best. She came to the same conclusion. I'm finding that doing these little sketches to determine my color placement is working out well for me. 

I am only making 5 blocks to use as a cover across the bed pillows. I wanted something that kept with the star theme, but was different, even with many of the same fabrics. So, the Nine Patch Star block seemed ideal. I could use leftover chunks from the Magic Stars quilt but was surprised again to find that I didn't have as much left as I thought. I was going to make one yellow star from the same fabric I used in the center of the Magic Star quilt, but there was only enough for one pair of HST blocks and I needed four pairs. So, I used another yellow from the quilt and pulled two more yellows from my scrap drawer. I had enough orange fabric to make two star blocks from that color. I also used the green and teal fabrics from the Magic Stars quilt.

I have three of the nine patch units put together so far, and think I can get the other two done before dinner tonight. This blog post has taken way longer than anticipated, as they usually do. I had to change servers mid-post because Firefox was taking forever to upload photos. I’ll try to finish this up quickly and link up with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday.

While working on the Nine Patch Stars quilt project I've also been making progress on my small Magic Stars quilt. I'm using it as a leader/ender project and it's coming along. These are the blocks that got sewn so far today. They just need to be trimmed and put in the "ready for the design wall" box. 

I'll also be linking up on Saturday with Angela at So Scrappy for the August RSC 2020 challenge.

It's been horribly smokey here all day, and yesterday too due to the many lightning fires burning in our area. Thankfully none are dangerously close. My heart goes out to the many people in California who have been effected by these fires. 

I hope your day is going well, that you are safe and well and enjoying some sewing time today.

Saturday 8/22: Update

Just a quick note. Was able to get quite a bit done on the Nine Patch Stars. Loving its scrappy look, especially loving the bright star points amid all that purple. 

I'm linking up with Angela at So Scrappy for August RSC in purple.

Hope your weekend is going well!