TBT - Oh! My Stars

It's Throwback Thursday! And I've pulled out one of my poor neglected quilts to highlight today. This quilt was one of my very first quilts. It was started and the top was completed before I ever thought of blogging, so I have no photo records of the process. 

This quilt was a shop challenge at one of the local quilt shops, sometime around 2006.  Instructions were open enough that you could end up with almost anything.  Instructions like "make 4 star blocks (any size)"  "make 4-patch blocks (any size)"   "create a border using half-square triangles". Each month everyone received the instructions and 1 piece of fabric, which had to be incorporated into the project in some way.  One of the little tiny yellow squares has a chicken on it - because the fabric for that month was a square of barnyard fabric.

As I said, there are no photos of the process, but when I made this quilt originally, I had used a red fabric for the 1st plain border. I thought that would tie in with the red/burgundy fabric I used for the pieced border chain blocks.  But I hated it from day one. That's part of the reason the quilt sat for 3 years before I pulled it out to quilt it. When I did, I knew I'd never like the result. So I disassembled my way back to that border, and replaced it with the same fabric used in the last border.  I like this much better.

The pieced border just about gave me fits. I didn't know enough to know what I was doing, so it ended up being a lot more complicated to attach than I expected.  Rather than designing it with a simple miter at the corners, I pieced all the chain blocks, and ended up with some funky bits to join at the corners.  Personally, I'm amazed I managed to get the border to fit, given my lack of experience.  But that border I replaced is carefully sized (different on the top/bottom than it is on the sides) to ensure the pieced border fit correctly.

I machine quilted this on my domestic machine (Husqvarna Quilt Designer II) with a simple meander.  Based on the photos, the batting is polyester which is typical for my early quilts. I never actually posted a finished photo of this quilt. The one above, quilted but not bound, is the only project photo I had. Amazingly, given my tendancy to donate quilts, I actually still have this quilt so I was able to take a finished photo of it.

If you want to join the Throwback Thursday fun, rules are simple. Write a post (or revive an old one) about an old quilt or project that you have - maybe something from your pre-blogging days, or just a project you love that you want to show off again.  Please include a link back to this post in yours, and when you link up make sure you are linking to your specific blog post, not just your blog address.  You want to make sure people can find your post if they drop by the linkup later.

Add your link, and check out some of the other links for some inspiration.  See my sidebar for a TBT button you can add to your blog.


   

    An InLinkz Link-up