Good old google came up with this free pattern Rainbow stars from mccalls. The instructions were very clear and easy to follow. The sewing however was very difficult.
Each of the stars I made used the same combination of fabrics, but in different positions. This process needs a little bit of organisation, in order to keep the fabric sets from getting mixed up.
I used zip lock sandwich bags to organise my fabrics. Each star in progress was kept in its own zippy bag, and I wrote a key on a scrap of paper which I kept in the bag.
As each step of the process was done, I took the pieces out of the labelled bag, and then put them straight back in when done. I even carried the sewing from the machine to the iron and back in the bag.
This system worked really well for me, and amazingly I didn't get any mix ups in the whole quilt.
Where I did fall short though was accuracy. Accurate seams and cutting are essential to prevent your stars from looking like jellyfish. When my stars were finished they were mostly a bit squiffy in the middle and didn't lay flat at all. There was no way that I could have inset squares neatly between them to make a quilt top.
What I did instead was applique the stars onto a plain brown background. Because the tips of the stars were also dark brown, I outlined the stars with strips of shot gold fabric. To fill in the huge amount of empty space between them, I made smaller stars and appliqued these on too. What is now glaringly obvious, but I didn't notice at the time, was that I accidentally used a different background brown for some of the stars.
Because of my difficulties with accuracy, and the mix ups with the browns, I wasn't happy with the quilt top. I believe that when something looks "handmade" this should mean that it looks like it was individually made, not that it looks a little bit crummy. In my opinion this quilt top fell short of the mark. I didn't feel that it was of high enough quality to give as a gift. However, I didn't want to waste the years of work, or the yards of fabric that had gone into it. The compromise I made was to use this as the back of the quilt, and to start again with a new and improved top...
What I did instead was applique the stars onto a plain brown background. Because the tips of the stars were also dark brown, I outlined the stars with strips of shot gold fabric. To fill in the huge amount of empty space between them, I made smaller stars and appliqued these on too. What is now glaringly obvious, but I didn't notice at the time, was that I accidentally used a different background brown for some of the stars.
Because of my difficulties with accuracy, and the mix ups with the browns, I wasn't happy with the quilt top. I believe that when something looks "handmade" this should mean that it looks like it was individually made, not that it looks a little bit crummy. In my opinion this quilt top fell short of the mark. I didn't feel that it was of high enough quality to give as a gift. However, I didn't want to waste the years of work, or the yards of fabric that had gone into it. The compromise I made was to use this as the back of the quilt, and to start again with a new and improved top...
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