Stargazer Friendship Quilting Project

Everyone needs another quarantine project, right? Because crafters live in a constant state of wanting to start another project and procrastinating on the ones that actually have due dates, right? (*cougbabyquiltgiftscough*) And even during quarantine, when my out-of-the-house responsibilities have been reduced to nothing, I crave the feeling of having too much on my plate. 

Actually, I have nothing to spend my fun money on except fabric right now. Why do I need clothes or makeup if I never go anywhere? And if I never go anywhere, I'm not using my money for movies and dates and restaurants. So instead, I'm buying ALL THE FABRIC. I am a fabric buying machine. Like, I'm scared that all the good fabric will get used up for masks and there won't be any good fabric left for crafting. And also I'm bored and I fill my boredom with online fabric shopping. Quarantine is doing strange things to my head. Today I went for a run and it was 78% humidity and I stepped (gently) on a frog and I screamed. 

But anyway. I saw this quilt design in a quilting store (Austin Sew and Vac) a while back and loved it, so I bought the pattern. It is by Villa Rosa Designs and it is called "Stargazer" but I soooooo wish it was called "Starfall" instead, like the Brandon Sanderson novel. I knew immediately that I wanted to make it in batiks and I knew that I wanted to make 3: one for me, one for Alli, and one for Colleen. I have known these girls since were were kids. Alli and I even were in the same Kindergarten class! I have already purchased the fabric for both of their quilts too and I am excited to make them, having learned some lessons about this pattern (and quilting in general I guess) through experience!

This purple one is mine...mostly because it turned out TERRIBLE haha. And actually, this is only the top. I haven't made the sandwich or quilted it or anything. I just wanted to talk about my plethora of mistakes. Starting with watching this video. Okay, it's not Jenny's fault, it's totally mine, and I don't regret trying to do what I did, I just regret HOW I did it. In the tutorial, when she's making the blocks that have star legs on them, she sews two lines and cuts between them to make her regular block and a bonus half square triangle, so I did that too because I hate wasting fabric and I love half square triangles. But because I wasn't thinking straight, I sewed the two lines a quarter of an inch apart and cut down the middle, making 1/8in seam allowances. I thought it would be no problem, but in fact, it was a major problem. The rest of the blocks were sewn on 1/4in allowance and the discrepancy usually would be no big deal (I'm good at fudging) but because of the star points, I couldn't just eat up a bit more seam allowance on some blocks--I needed them to be right at the 1/8in so that my stars legs looked nice and pointy...and it made the seams all wobbly. The top does not lay flat, and the biggest problem areas are the light-colored middles of the big stars. They are super puffy. All of this could have been avoided if I just sewed those two lines 1/2in apart!!!! Does that even make sense? Am I talking into the void here? Any quilters in the house who can commiserate? Also, I flubbed my layout and put two of the same fabric block next to each other TWICE. It doesn't help that I layed it out in my bedroom and then carried my stacks to my sewing room. And usually I have James come and double check my layouts to be sure I don't do this very thing and I didn't. But I've learned my lesson! I'll have James help me every time from now on! I guess this isn't a plethora of mistakes, just one big one and one small one. But the consequences are...pretty rough. I mean, it was fun and I do like how it looks from far away LOL. Hopefully Alli's and Colleen's will turn out better! 

I'll have to see what happens when I actually quilt it. *gulp*