Stars Quilt Along Progress: Checking in on Seasonal Goals

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

In last week's Project Update, I took a look at some of my recent progress quilting Stars of the City and piecing Stars of the Lily Pond, and was reminded of just how soon the final step is to be released. I'm sad to see another quilt along come to a close, but I can't wait to see how each participant has taken my pattern and made the quilt their own!

But before the final assembly release date arrives—it's coming up on 07 May!—I had hoped to complete a certain amount of progress on each of my versions of the Stars of the City pattern so they can be shown off with the pattern release!

With that deadline approaching, I've set aside most of my other projects for the time being so I can focus on my two Stars quilts. Let's see how it's going so far!

Stars of the City

For the original Stars of the City sample quilt, I'm currently working on quilting!

The goal for the hand quilting is to have it finished by the time the final step of the quilt along is released next month, then to have the quilt squared off and bound by June. With that in mind, here's how far along I am with the quilting right now:

The three blocks in the centre column, Queen of the Sky, Birds of the Night, and Square in a Star, are completely quilted. The background surrounding them has the grid quilted and the area surrounding just the Queen of the Sky block has all the filler stars quilted.

On the left side, Harbour at Dawn has been quilted and the area surrounding it has the grid quilting completed, but the Double Ribbon Star block above it and the background surrounding that block have not yet been started.

To the right, the area above the Tangled Ribbon block has the grid and filler stars completely quilted, but the block itself and the Farmer's Star below it have not been quilted.

I'll admit, there is still a lot of quilting left to go, and odds are pretty good that I won't be meeting my goal, but I'll continue to quilt a little more every day and keep working towards it!

With all of that quilting still left to go, I plan to alter my approach to focus more on widespread progress across the whole quilt rather than complete progress in small areas.

Moving forward, I'll focus on completing the background grid quilting first. Having that grid in place will mean I can remove all the basting pins from the quilt since the grid is spread across the whole quilt and will keep all the layers together and properly aligned!

Once that's finished, I'll shift my focus to the outline quilting on the star blocks. These blocks are the main focus of the quilt and they will look their best once the quilting is there to accent their shapes!

When both of those are complete, I'll get back to quilting the filler stars across the background!

There may be one little exception to this order, and that's the bottom corner where I'll be adding my label. Since I don't have a label to add to the quilt yet, I'll be leaving that area alone for now!

Stars of the Lily Pond

With a plan in place for Stars of the City, we can now take a look at my progress on Stars of the Lily Pond!

The purpose of the second version of this pattern is to show off how a few changes to colour selection and block layout can create a totally unique design. Each print is distributed throughout the quilt in different amounts than in the original, resulting in changes to the fabric requirements, but the block and units the quilt is comprised of are all taken directly from the original Stars of the City pattern!

You can see a little of what I mean in this piece of the quilt, which features the Square in a Star block with a slightly altered colour placement. It's also visible in the block background, where the blue background fabric is only used on one side of the block.

This is just a little sneak peak at the final layout for Stars of the Lily Pond, I hope to be able to show off the full design when the finishing instructions are released in May!

And since that's the goal I'm working towards, maybe we should take a look at the progress I've made piecing together the units I'll need for the full quilt top!

I've already completed the piecing on all of the star blocks I need for this version of the pattern, but I had fallen pretty far behind on my Drunkard's Path units. I've spent some time cutting the pieces I'll need for those, including some alternate colour variations that don't appear in the original pattern!

And although I've already started piecing the quilt top with the section showed earlier, that doesn't mean I'm completely finished my Drunkard's Paths. In order to break up the monotony of piecing one curve after another, I've divided the quilt into chunks and piece the units needed to complete that chunk of the quilt.

This way, I can enjoy watching the quilt grow rather than getting lost in curve after curve after curve!

Friends, I feel so much more motivated to get back to working on these two quilts now that I've got my plan laid out!

Though there's still a chance I won't meet both, or possibly either, of these goals before the final assembly instructions are released in a few weeks, I still plan to continue my progress and see if I can surprise myself! I can't wait to see how I do!

In the meantime, if you'd like to check out the pattern instructions for Stars of the City, links to each month so far can be found below! Or, if you've been working your way through this pattern along with me, I would love to hear how your blocks are turning out! Please leave me a comment, drop me an email, or tag your photos with #starsofthecitybom on Instagram so I can find them!

Next week, I'll be taking a little break from the blog to visit family, so the next post will be the final pattern release for Stars of the City on 07 May! I'll see you then!