Thursday, October 3, 2019

Stargazer: Final Assembly

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Such was the thought going through my head as I took out all the pieces from the 9 months worth of blocks and started to assemble them.

I followed the instructions and slowly by slowly the blocks came together. I would say that the toughest part of this is organizing all the pieces and making sure everything is in the right place. The actual sewing, though tedious, was not difficult. What really helped is that I used foundation paper piecing instead of freezer paper piecing, so while I was piecing the triangles together into blocks the paper provided extra stability.

Once the individual blocks were all done and trimmed, I sewed the individual sections in 9 parts. This was a very trying process as almost all the blocks had bias edges, and I'm afraid to even breathe near bias edges. Also, there are some seriously thick seams here. Even with the help of a mallet and a heavy hand on the iron, the seams are still thick enough that I hope I don't break a needle while I'm quilting this!

And finally, after a few months of work, this quilt top has come together. It is quite pretty, but being an all-solids quilt, it lacks a bit of soul. I hope the quilting can put the soul back in.

I'm thrilled to have finished this block of the month quilt. It was my first ever BOM where I had to wait for instructions month by month and do a little at a time, and I'm unsure if I will want to follow such a format in the future. There's a lot of mental and physical setup and teardown every month that can be avoided if I did it in one fell swoop. But I'm glad I tried it this once.

5 comments:

  1. Your version is lovely. I too am making this quilt, but stopped with the month by month process after the 4th month for the very reasons you mentioned. Since all of the instructions are now available, I'm getting ready to get back into it and get it done. No more projects like this for me.

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  2. Hi Liz, I am making this quilt, too. I am finishing up month 9 now, putting the quilt together. I used my own group of solids and the coloring diagram. I changed some of my colors and the months went along because I did not have enough yardage of some fabrics. As a result, I am having issues putting the blocks together for the final quilt. I hope it turns out well in the end. Your quilt top is awesome!

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    1. Thanks Danette, and good luck with putting your top together!

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  3. I know what you mean about the mental work of BOMs and mystery quilt. We techies are used to solving problems where more of the info is available upfront, I think. That being said, I'm sure glad you persisted! This is a wonderful design :)

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  4. Great job waiting that BOM out, and keeping up! We sell so many BOMs at the quilt shop that never get made. I'm more of a one fell swoop quilter, too. It's beautiful, Liz!

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