Well that not what I had planned

This week has been moving along nicely. I got the baseboards DONE yesterday and the masking tape all removed. Now I just need to do some touch up on the walls. Feels good to finish that part. And while I was sitting on the floor I had plenty of time to think about the kind of quilt I wanted to make for my son's new bedroom. It has to include star blocks as those are his favorite and he's quite proud of himself that he can identify an Ohio Star (but that's about the only one he knows). I had purchased 6 yds of a lovely light blue background fabric last week so all I had to decide on was what pattern.

Last evening I showed my son 2 options - this one, Oh My Stars...

which will require about a bajillion blocks to make a generous queen size quilt. Or I offered that I could make a quilt similar to this ancient UFO of mine..

I proposed making one in this style with bigger blocks (10") and all in tone on tone blues. He pondered his options and broke the news that he really did like the Oh My Stars pattern. Hmmm... ok, I do love him but this one is going to take a while and I really want to get this off my list. I really wanted him to pick the second option since I would only need about 50 sawtooth start blocks and I could knock them out rather quickly. Then he asked what plans I had for this UFO. Actually, no plans. I started this at least 10 years ago. Every block is a different fabric that has some kind of metallic on it. There are 111 6" blocks. I still like the blocks but I know why I put this away, I'm not as thrilled with the background fabric as I was when I started and there is no way to change that.

Now this UFO is exactly half quilted. I stitched in the ditch around the stars, nothing fancy. I contemplated picking out all the quilting and sending it off to my long arm gal since I know she could do something wonderful. However the prospect of picking out all the quilting is as unappealing as finishing the quilting myself. So that's what I'm going to do.

My plan for this quilt was to shade the colors of the stars across the top. It starts dark in the corners and gets very light in the center and then gradates into dark again. I think I did a very good job with this. And my points are nice and pointy even on the HST border - those little guys are 1 1/2" finished. I just dislike the large scale white on white background I picked. It has spirals, and loops and asterisk motifs - very modern looking - while the blocks are rather traditional. Oh well I just need to embrace the juxtaposition.

As always I did fussy cut some blocks. Here comes the sun...

and here is a cute Christmas soldier.

So this isn't what I planned to do but that's what I'm going to do. I will get around to making him a quilt in the style of Oh My Stars, just not right now. So I'm off to wind about a dozen bobbins and get this done. It is nice to see that this UFO held up nicely and it wasn't even sealed in plastic... it just languished in a basket in the corner, waiting for its time to come.

Happy stitching-
carol fun