String Star

Hurrah, our luggage arrived safe and sound, no doubt after an amazing vacation of their own. When I was telling ya'all about the handwork I'd been doing on vacation, it completely escaped me that all my work was all in the missing bags. D'oh. Good thing, otherwise I'd have been worrying even more about the luggage.

Inspired by Bonnie's recent post of an old maverick string star, plus her gorgeous string kaleidescope which she made with fabrics outside her normal color range, I present to you my string stars quilt.

Yes, this is yet another lousy photo and the quilt is in storage. I got a lot of quilts in storage and I'll be really happy to see them one of these days.

I used all sorts of colors I wouldn't normally put together when I sewed this back in 2003 (or was it the end of 2002?). I blame Siobhan. She was working on a strippy star in all sorts of fun bright citrusy colors. I decided I had to use some lemon, lime and orange too. She gave me some of her leftover strips to help me get started. The colors are kind of obnoxious, aren't they. Maybe I should have used a different background other than that gorgeous red, but that was the one thing I knew I wanted from the very beginning.

I string pieced the diamonds onto paper and then put it all together in the usual way, stinking y-seams in the corners. Boy do I hate insetting seams. I had mini-volcanoes but Bonnie did an incredibly job of quilting this bad boy and it was amazing how flat she got it. I've since figured out that if I just chop those background squares in the corner into triangles and the background triangles into smaller triangles, it would all be straight sewing - no insetting. Definitely the way to go the next time I try this pattern.