Chained Star Project: Part 1

It wasn't my intention to sleep the whole of last week like Rip van Winkle, but an old issue with back pain and muscle spasms made a surprise visit and the medications made me sleep most of the time.  But they did their job - the spasms are gone and the pain is mild enough to not need any medication, so it's time to get back to work and cram two week's worth of work into one.

Let's get back to the Chained Star project that I almost finished before my sewing machine died on me.  (That issue put me behind schedule before last week, so I guess I'm cramming three weeks of work into one - wish me luck!)

When assembling my block, I decided to create two mini pockets from the vertical rectangles at the top and bottom of the block.  To do this, I cut 2 extra rectangles and hemmed the top of each.

These were placed on top of the regular rectangles and sewn as one in the block as per directions in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks.  The only tricky part was remembering to place the pocket opening for the bottom of the block the opposite way from the top.

The pockets are rather small, but as the saying goes: "great things come in small packages."  A great variety of tiny treasures can be tucked into these tiny pockets: nail clippers, jewelry, crayons, flash drives, micro cars, little love notes and maybe a frog or two.

Chained Star Project: Fabrics

I began cutting fabrics on Monday.  In the end, I let the fabrics sort of dictate which colorway to use - the black chalkboard fabric has to be the rectangles because chalkboards are rectangular!

It takes less than half a fat quarter of each fabric to make this block.  In most cases, one-fourth of a fat quarter is plenty.  This project also requires:
14" square muslin for backing the block
14" square thin batting or flannel
two 12.5" x 16.5" fabric for back of wall hanging - choose a coordinating fabric for one piece as part will extend beyond the quilt block
13" binding
scraps and miscellaneous trims for embellishing

Chained Star Project

It's still Saturday here on the west coast, so I'm squeaking in under deadline even though most of you have called it a day and tucked yourself under a quilt.  My dial-up internet service was being quite cranky today and disconnecting every 5-30 minutes.  When your modem works at 24K, 5 minutes is barely enough time to even log on!

Anyway, on to the project!  Here's a shot of the novelty fabric I've chosen for this project.

It's a kid print with bright primary colors which will be fun to work with.  This fabric came in a pack of FQs and being a large print, the options for using it are rather few.  With fussy-cutting, there's enough to get four 6.5" squares, but I've decided on a 1-block project: a large wall pocket for stashing diapers or bedside reading material or other treasures that clutter a kid's bed until mom or dad insists that they be put away.

The copyright for my Chained Star block currently belongs to Quiltmaker so I can't give you instructions for making the block for at least another 6 months when the copyright returns to me.  While we wait for the 100 Blocks issue to go on sale (May 10), I'll share some of my pre-sewing process with you.  First, I pulled coordinating fabrics from my stash.  I settled on a red with white dots, a yellow with tiny black and white butterflies (I think that's what they are) and a black with white "chalk" drawings. 

Next, I used  Electric Quilt software to play with the colors, and I found even more ways to color this block!

Oh my, it's going to be difficult choosing just one!  Since children often think of stars as yellow or gold, I chose yellow for the star points in most of the colorways and I'll most likely choose one where the star really pops out, but isn't it interesting how a set of five shapes in one configuration can yield so many variations.  A dozen blocks could easily be made with these four fabrics with each block being different. And even though they're different, the "chain" still links them all together.  I love playing with designs!