Oh My (Scrappy) Stars

Well, here it is all put together. Very scrappy Christmas quilt - but I think it's kind of fun and it certainly has reduced my stash of Christmas fabric (not a big stash to start with), so I guess it served its purpose. Perhaps it will get quilted in time for next Christmas!

Oh my stars - last piece!

Finally finished the final section of the Oh My Stars block of the month - only a little behind. Now it's simply a matter of joining the top together and then quilting it. Notice the ironic use of the word "simply" in that sentence.... The joining won't be hard, but it may take a while to quilt it!

Oh My...

Well, it's not finished yet, but it's a start on the final section of the Oh My Stars block of the month. There are a few more pieces to put together for this section, but I have hopes of finishing it soon. Ish.

Oh My Stars

Ok, so I still haven't done section 12, but one of the things I did do, in my limited sewing time today, was to join together the pieces I've made so far, as much as I could. There are now three sections - the large, bottom on, the little piece at the top left and the right hand corner. When I do get the last section done, I'll have very little joining to do, which is nice.

Oh My Stars

OK, finally finished the September installment of this block of the month - yes, I know it's almost the end of October, but sometimes, that's how these things go. Not much longer until the whole thing is finished. Hurrah! And I have to say, it really has thinned out my stash of Christmas fabrics, which were mostly in small pieces.

Oh My Stars

Well, I've finally made a star on the September installment for the Oh My Stars Block of the Month - yes, I know October is nearly done, but it's been a busy month. Or two. I'll get there, but it may take another week to finish the rest of this installment...

Oh my stars...block of the month

This month's installment wasn't posted until well after the middle of the month (I stopped checking after a while, though it's there now) - however, my friend Julie, who is also making the quilt, worked out the pattern in EQ and sent it to me as well, as she got tired of waiting. My version is slightly different than the Planet Patchwork one as the snowball has bigger corners and the flying geese at the bottom left are a bit truncated. On the whole, it works, though.

Oh my Stars

Here's the July installment in the Oh My Stars Block of the Month. Only a few small errors in the pattern this month - nothing insurmountable. Though I did realise after I finished that the bit I made dark green in the largest block should probably have been the background colour (cream) instead. Never mind - the whole quilt will be so scrappy that no one will ever know!

Oh my Stars - latest installment

After waiting several weeks for the June instructions to be posted, I finally had a chance to work on this on the weekend. If you are doing this BOM project, be warned there's a mistake in the background size for the trees. Not sure what the actual size should be as I free-pieced it in the end, but I'm sure you could work it out!

Oh My Stars - big block

Only one block this month in the Oh My Stars block of the month, but it's a big one - 18". Be warned, if you are making this block from the PDF instructions - the size for the border strips is wrong! (Should be 2" wide, not 1.5")

More stars...

And this is the April block(s) for the Oh My Stars BOM - When this was done, I thought it might be fun to see all of the ones I had made laid out in the right order - and yes, it IS fun, but it just goes to show how many months are left!

Oh my stars - catching up

This is actually the March set of blocks for the Oh My Stars BOM - I am also working on April, but it's not quite done yet - perhaps tomorrow! I've done lots of other things, too, but am saving some of them to show for all those days coming up when I have to work and won't have done any sewing or other art...

Oh my stars...

One thing I did today was to complete the February installment of the Oh My Stars BOM - those of you who have been following along will know I'm using my relatively small stash of Christmas fabrics for this project, as I have no Christmas quilt larger than about 18" square in the house (except the tree skirt). Considering this was only two 12" blocks, a lot of scraps were generated, but that's because I took the opportunity to straighten out the drawer in which I keep my Christmas fabrics, including removing the contents of a small bag of Christmas (and a few co-ordinating, non-Christmas) scraps and adding them to the general scrap basket.

Here's the Christmas stash all neat and tidy:



I think I may move it elsewhere - for instance the basket which was made empty when I cleared out the batik scraps - as it's actually not a lot of material. (And very low on reds, which is presenting a minor problem in this project - problem is, I don't really like most red Christmas fabrics!) I could then put something else in this drawer - perhaps my collection of Japanese taupes and taupe-like fabrics, which is outgrowing its current home...

Last productive day...

Tomorrow is back to work, so today was my last chance to spend a large chunk of the day sewing - so I did! I did lots of stuff, including a few things I won't show today - I'll save them for later in the week when I've not even been in the room...

One thing I did was do the January round of the Oh My Stars Block of the Month from Planet Patchwork - I actually looked yesterday morning to see if the round 3 instructions were up yet, and at the point I looked, they weren't. But they were there today, so I've done this piece to add to my Christmassy star sampler.

I also put together the snowball and nine-patch blocks from yesterday. Don't they make a nice little baby quilt? I'm pleased with the top and will put it away either until someone has a baby or until I decide to make it into a charity top. Not sure which it will be yet.




And just in case you wondered, here's what the scrap basket looks like at the end of the day today:



Still pretty empty, but as you can see, scraps are accumulating. I think I'm going to add a photo slot in my sidebar - "State of the Scrapbasket"...

More Stars

Part two of the Oh My Stars BOM today (the December part) - from now on, I most likely won't be doing two parts two days running, but I had to catch up, as I started late. Probably no sewing tomorrow (maybe some cross-stitch while watching Dr Who), so Happy Christmas to all out there reading...

Oh my stars

This is the start of a new project - it's a block-of-the-month online, and it's all Julie's fault. See, I was finally catching up on some blog reading and I noticed she was doing this BOM from Planet Patchwork, and after having a look at it, I was intrigued.

Rather oddly for me, I am not doing it in the black and jewel-tone colourway that it's shown in (which would be something I'd gravitate towards normally), but because I am feeling both scrappy and Christmassy at the moment, I decided I'd do it all in assorted Christmas fabrics, of which I have a smallish stash - more than enough for this project, though admittedly, lots of blues, a fair few greens and not so many reds. Which is fine. I'll do the backgrounds in different cream-on-creams and it will all tie together. I don't have a Christmas quilt, so it seemed a good choice.

The block above is actually the unit from November; I will have to do the unit from December in the next few days - not a problem, as I will have plenty of time to sew over the next week or so (hurrah!).





I've also made some more scrappy blocks (these are 6" blocks) - some the other day and some today while doing the Stars BOM - I was using them as enders and leaders. I think I am maybe, finally, beginning to notice a little difference in my scrap basket - though whether this is because of actually having used scraps up or whether it's because I have been separating out the larger scraps and piling them up on the corner of my sewing table to save for other projects, who knows. I rather suspect the latter...