Challenges – I Did Another One

I wrote about a quilt block challenge I did with my quilt guild back in March of 2017. Well I am doing another one this year.  (I actually do one every year but this year brought some lessons.)

Our block challenges always have a theme and this year the theme is stars (Our quilt show theme is Dancing Stars).  Well I had lots of ideas.  I thought first about doing a block of various embellishment type stars from felted stars to punch needle stars to sequin stars all on the same background.  Well, when I drew it out, it just looked too busy. 

Then I saw an embroidery design of stars and became attracted to this star shape. I know it looks like the star shining down on Bethlehem at Christmas but I really liked the shape. I thought it would be a little different from other stars that might be made.

I wanted this star to be appliquéd and I do my best appliqué with the buttonhole stitch. And to make the star sparkle, I decided to use some metallic thread to do the buttonhole stitch.   Using metallic thread can be tricky at times with hand stitching.  As the thread is repeatedly pulled through the fabric, it might unravel and shred.  Usually when stitching by hand, I cut a thread that is about 18 inches in length but with metallic thread, I took about a 8-12inch thread.

Now one thing to do when doing a challenge is to read all the rules.  I didn’t.  Oops.  With our block challenge, a background fabric is usually provided and often times an accent fabric.  When I got my little baggie of fabric, I thought there was only one fabric in it, the accent fabric (which I thought was the background fabric). But there were two fabrics.  the background fabric , a navy grunge fabric and the accent fabric which looked like a starry night sky. The rules said I had to use both fabrics but could add whatever other fabric I wanted. 



My plan was for the background fabric (which remember I thought was the starry night fabric) and the white on white I choose (I tried to take a picture of it so you could see the design which was little circles but the picture always came out looking like plain white fabric.).  So now I had to adjust my design.  What to do?  The best idea with the accent fabric being dark was to add it to the white star somehow.  But how?  I tried different ideas in the center, a 5 pointed star – no.  A circle – maybe.  A heart (you know me with the heart icon) – no, that didn’t look good.  So I wondered about a 4 pointed star that would repeat the basic shape of the big star.  Fortunately I had a computer program that could create different stars and it had the shape I wanted.  (I am terrible with free hand drawing of shapes like stars.)  So I created a 4 pointed star big enough to fill the center space of my big star and show the design of the accent fabric.

I will show you how I finished the block next week.


©2020  Cheryl Fillion