As I suspected, finishing unfinished projects seems to be good for the blahs. I put my nose down toward the sewing machine last week and finished the crazy star quilt I’d started a while ago. I held my breath as I used the walking foot on my Bernina for the first time to quilt straight lines across the star, then continued to hold my breath while I free motioned the entire quilt around the star with loop-d-loops. (Are these out of style? Oh please say they aren’t!). Everything worked just like it was supposed to (I love my sewing machine!) and I finished hand-stitching the binding while Peter and I watched Alaska State Troopers on Saturday night (don’t you want to party with us?).

The backing is a cotton flannel sheet. Cream-colored. Actually, the flannel backing is the whole reason I even started this quilt in the first place. We have one flannel-backed quilt in our family room that everyone fights over, so I wanted to make another one to keep the peace. Quilts shouldn’t cause arguments, right?

The pattern is out of Denyse Schmidt’s newest book, Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration. It came together quickly and is a very forgiving pattern. Once the star is constructed (foundation-pieced), the rest is adding the solid “ground” around it.

Size: 76″ x 66″

Star– Constructed of all kinds of prints from my stash, a few vintage fabrics, several solids, some corduroy.

Ground– Kona “Celery”. (Many had suggested a deep navy blue, I’m talking to you Melissa and Claire. In the end, I needed the ground to be brighter than the star to work in our family room, so that’s why I chose the Celery (plus its what they had at the fabric store and I didn’t want to order and wait for fabric).

Backing– 1 twin-sized flannel sheet, cut to size

Binding- Kona “Peacock”

Quilting thread was a light green to match the celery.

There are more finished objects to come. I highly recommend making a commitment to finishing things that will make you happy to finish, it definitely does a lot for the psyche.