Sleeping Porch, Sparkling Stars

And now,

we've reached the third, and final installment

in our Sleeping Porch Series,

my family's favorite - Sparkling Stars

This one was (mostly) fun.

First,

I drew up a design on graph paper

using  30 8 inch blocks

in a 5x6 configuration,

and just plugged in different sizes and styles of stars,
making it so that I have very few seams to match up
when joining blocks, to speed the process up a smidge. 

I made notes of how many I needed of each,

and also how many filler squares,

and rectangles,

and which way the rectangles were oriented.

I chose fabrics for,

 and cut and pieced 

a few stars at a time.

I cut a few of the squares and rectangles as I went, too.

Over the course of a few weeks,

working 20 minutes here, and 40 there,

I managed to get most of the stars made,

and one Saturday in mid-May

Tyler let me have the day off from working on the house

(we are building a house on our property.

We've been at it a little over a year,

and the end,

though still a ways off,

is finally in sight)

and I laid out the quilt,

made a few more stars,

and cut the rest of the filler blocks,
rearranged things a few times,

and got the top sewn together.

This one got a fun big polka dot thrifted sheet backing,

and then I got right to work learning a new quilting motif - swirls.

After practicing for about an hour,
on both paper and fabric,
I felt confident enough to start quilting
for real.
I think the swirls are a great complement
to all of the angles of the stars,
and coupled with the warm and natural cotton batting,
they create great texture, too.

Sparkling Stars got a lawn binding also,
because it's just so delightfully soft,

This one is also in the shop,
and all proceeds from the sale of it
will go towards the purchase of a sewing machine for Rahab's Rope :-)