September Quilting and Star Gazing Blocks

Today was our first day of quilting since our summer break. We have 9 girls in our group, and we meet for 9 months, so I chose the first month to pick a block for the group to sew, and also the choice of color and theme of a fat quarter for everyone to exchange.

The name of the quilt is Star Gazing by The Pattern Basket. I had all the pieces pre-cut and ready to sew. I sewed 4 of them last week, and the eight girls that were here today, each sewed one for me. This will be my quilt when it is finished. There will be sashing strips that go between the blocks, and between the rows, and a border of the same background fabric all the way around the blocks. There will be another border of a different color as soon as I decide what to use. I thought I had bought a fabric to match the deep purple star on the far bottom left, but it did not match when I received it, so that is out. The blocks right now measure about 15 1/4”, which is a little shy of what the pattern says they should be. We also experienced a little problem with the pieced strip being a bit too short. We really needed to ‘stretch and pin’ to get it to fit. One of my gals suggested that maybe the pattern was wrong. I just asked a gal who also made these blocks if she had the same problem, and she said she did. She thought maybe she had cut wrong, but since we had the same problem, she did think the pattern could be wrong.

We had a fabric exchange, and I chose ‘fun’ fabrics. Here are the FQ’s we exchanged today. Since I picked, I got two of each one!

It was a day full of fun, food and laughter. We celebrated two birthdays, and I sewed blocks together for the Park View Quilting Ministry, but I didn’t get a top done. Maybe tomorrow.

Hope your day was fun too!