Lucky Stars Table Runner

Over Thanksgiving I had the pleasure of visiting a LQS close to LaCrosse, WI called Olive Juice Quilts. On Black Friday, they had a BOGO yard of fabric…. Someone did some damage, but talk about a deal. I bought LOTS of fabric at low prices, and we all know that I needed it and that I will use it, so I can\’t get too mad at myself.

I went with my girlfriend and her sister and brother in law, so to keep the girls busy and engaged while I oogled and shopped and Doug went to the auto shop, I tasked them with picking out fabrics for a project that I wanted to make for their mom. They did a great job and provided me with a nice palette to work with. I knew I wanted to do some paper piecing because I haven\’t done it in awhile and I love the intricacy it produces. I have been eying several of the Lucky Stars BOM blocks and thought that would be a great set of stars to choose from.

I started with this one, I was not happy with it. The corners did not match up and I pretty much lost confidence and felt like I failed at life after this attempt.

The next one I tried went much better, I was happier with the corners and the color choices were more bold as well. I took the paper out before I sewed the individual wedges together. That helped a lot. I do wish that I would have altered the coloring in the center star with the orange so that the shading showed better, but hey, you can\’t win them all.

The next one I tried I felt even better about. It was simpler and had less pieces so I felt more confident. I did scorch one piece of it, but you can barely tell so I let it pass.

When I put those three blocks together they just didn\’t look right. The color placement didn\’t work so I decided that I would need to make another block to even out the coloring.

This is the last block I completed. I needed to bring the navy into the outer parts of the block to even everything out. This was my favorite block. I finally got color placement, piecing, and patience combined to make a beautiful block.

I put them all together and felt good about the placement. Because this was a table runner I wanted to challenge myself with the quilting since the piece was smaller and very maneuverable in my machine. I did very dense quilting in the negative space and accentuated the star shapes with lines and FMQ.

I am very happy with how the piece turned out. Jessie\’s mom loved it. Here is the finished front of the runner:

Here is the back of the runner. The fabric on top is the inspiration fabric. It is actually my favorite one out of the entire set but unfortunately I couldn\’t use it in the paper piecing because I feel like in order to have successful paper piecing you need fabrics that read certain colors, and this fabric had such a large scale print, it was very hard to get pieces that read as one color instead of many.

Does anyone know what line the top fabric is? I love it and would really like to use it in something else that could showcase it more next time.

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