Star Miniature

I'm not sure why I'm calling this the star miniature except that "star project" is always how I think of it in my head.  I started it a long time back just as a hand EPP exercise for traveling.  I was content to just work on it in fits and spurts on airplanes for a while.  However, recently I've been dreaming about it (which is actually kind of weird for me), so in the last couple of weeks I've dedicated lots of hours to it.  I'm a pretty slow (and sadly inaccurate) piecer, but now that it's all put together I really like it!  It looks so much better without all the white basting thread that was holding in the papers.

The center part of the star is based on one of Hillbilly Tonya's Ahhhs which I drew out and then recolored.  It had been in this state for a while, but it felt too small and unfinished to be it's own thing and I didn't really want to make a bunch of them this size, so I designed and pieced an outer ring.

 Finally, just this week, I finished stitching it into the black background.  To this point it's all hand pieced and currently is about 20".  I'm going to cut down the black a bit though because I'm going to add a floating 1/4" piano key border (which I'll machine piece).  I want the whole thing to finish at 22-23" so that it can go in the miniature category at the shows.  It's like my very own rainbow color wheel!

I've also been working quite a bit this week on my orchard quilt (hooray), I got the sky tiles quilted and am working on the trees.  Hopefully a post about them on Friday.  Happy Wednesday everyone!  Linking up with Lee as ever.

Ahhhhs.....

While I'm gone I thought I'd share a couple of pictures of the hand project that's been following me around the world the last couple of months.  Inspired by the lovely Tonya over at Hillbilly Handiworks, I decided to kick my English paper piecing up a notch.  She has been presenting an awesome series of English paper pieced blocks (called Ahhs), you guys should totally check it out.

I was getting bored with regular hexies, so I decided to make a block based on her  Ahhh #4 Little Girl's Star and is a bit like Ahhhh #25, Seven Stars.  She mentions that this block was first published in 1950.  You should check out her version, I love the way she fussy cuts the fabric to give a nifty kaleidoscope/snowflake effect.  I went with a more geometrical version.

The whole thing is about 7" across, so each of the pieces is pretty small.  I thought it was going to be finished with this much (I figured I'd hand quilt it to be a mini-mini-quilt), but it just doesn't feel done.  I have it with me on this trip to add some more layers around the outside.  I love the rainbow of colors with the black and white (of course the ugly white basting thread will come out when I remove the papers).  It's been a fun, small thing to carry around and stitch on,