2017 Finishes - Star & Chain #26

I have posted about projects out of this book before, as it was a year long program called "Anniversary Club" put on my a quilt shop for Thimbleberries.  The program sent out a kit once a month of each project in this book.  If you are interested in the other projects I have completed from this book you can read them here. If you want to read about the process of making the quilt, you can click and read about it here.

This project is called "Star & Chain".  I fell in love with it, mainly from this picture.  It is one of my favorites from the book.

This is a picture of the layout of the block.  Was a little complicated to do and put together when all the pieces were cut out and made.

These are just some of the pieces that made the frame around the star in the middle.

This also is the making of the frames.

These are the little triangles that were cut off of the frames.  I have to think of something to do with all of these piles of leftovers.

This is one thought of using up the triangles, but pin wheels are not my favorite to make.  Remember this was done last year.  The triangles are still technically in a pile, just now piles in a bag.

These are finished star units.

Here is the making of the rows, showing how the framing goes together around the stars.

This is a finished flimsy.

Final and finished product.  I think my picture is as good as the one in the book!  

This is a close up of the quilting and binding.

Finally this picture shows the backing I choose.

Size: 64" x 76"

Fabric Lines Used:  Kit using Thimbleberries Fabrics

Greens and Yellows

Pattern: Star & Chain

Designer:  Lynette Jensen

Long Arm Quilter:  Carol Logan Nelson

Year Began: 10/2016

Year Completed: 06/17 

Star and Chain Quilt

I picked out a quilt that was a part of a past quilt club.  It was a Thimbleberries club back in 2008.  The club consisted of 11 projects that were complete quilt kits shipped every other month.  This quilt kit was for the month of June 2008.

This quilt is called Star and Chain, and the pattern can be found in Lynette Jensen's book, "In Celebration of Quilting".

There was a lot of repetitive cutting of pieces.  It was important to keep them in order, as I found out later, getting one strip out of place, messed up the top and bottom strip where this one was attached to in the quilt pattern. 

In order to make the outer part of each block, I needed to make these strips, but then I needed to make  the same amount in the opposite direction to later sew together to make the outer star point.

This is the pile of corners I cut off of the above strips,  I have a ziploc bag full of these half-square triangles, that I will maybe figure out something at a later date.  One thing about the Thimbleberries projects that come in kits, there is always, and I mean always an excess of fabric.  I have a bin full of leftover fabric from the many projects that I have made using her lines of fabric over the years.   I already made a mystery quilt a couple of years ago, king size, using nothing but scraps.  

I made a couple of pinwheel blocks with the above scraps, but they didn't go together as well as I would like, as when you are cutting off corners, the pieces are not as precise as they would be if you were cutting them from a piece of fabric.  I will figure something out eventually.  

These pictures show the center star, using some flying geese blocks, and putting it together  in a nine patch block.  The strip below the star is the mirror image strip blocks that I made in the pictures above.  

You can see in this picture, that placement of the different colored strips is critical in order to have the  same colored strips surround the same colored blocks.

Here is the completed top, laying on my kitchen floor.  Not the best picture, but the weather is not cooperating this time of the year.

I will get it off to the long arm quilter after the first of the year, and will be the first finished quilt for 2017!

Warmest...