Star Quilt

My sisters and I are big crafters. I spent two weeks over the Holidays in California with one of my sisters and naturally, I brought projects to work on. I found a block on Pinterest that I really liked and changed it up a bit. The original block had the star and background white and that didn’t work for me. I turned it into this:

In the original block, the blue was the only color and it wasn’t zingy enough for me. Before I left for Cali, I cut out all the pieces so I could just dive into the sewing once I got there.

There are more blues than the ones you see. I did a bit stacking-and-whacking to make the cutting go faster so the other blue fabrics are buried. It was very satisfying seeing all the pieces laid out and ready to sew.

My sister has an old Bernina 930 sewing machine that was great to use. It’s old enough that it doesn’t have a computer and the zillion bells and whistles the newer machines have. Nothing unneeded that I had to get used to. It’s an all metal machine, nice and solid. I like my Viking machine but I use the 1/4″ quilting foot A LOT and the one on my machine is rather flimsy. The piece of metal that keeps you from moving past the 1/4″ mark is thin on my machine’s foot and as a result, my sewing isn’t as accurate as it could be. My seams were spot on using the Bernina 930 and now I want one. The search is on.

When I wasn’t playing with my sister’s cat (I love you Mavi!), I spent most of my time sewing. There was a lot of pinning, ironing and stitching and I had to share the table and machine with my sister but we made it work.

Two days before I left to return to Michigan, I had all 20 blocks sewn and ready to be assembled into rows.

I was amazed I could get that much work done on the quilt interspersed with shopping and spend time with family. We watched the holiday shows put on my great-niblings schools, did some shopping, and spent Christmas with my nephew’s family, my niece and my sister. It was lots of fun and my family is wonderful! Despite some illness scattered through the two weeks, I had a great time!

I completed this quilt top in two weeks! (Well, almost. I want the quilt for my double bed so I need to add an 8″ or 10″ border all around the edge, most likely in solid blue. It won’t take much time so I’m counting this as pretty much complete. Ninety-nine percent of the work is done so it counts in my book.) I love how it turned out!

I am so looking forward to 2026! I’ve made a list of 12 unfinished projects that I want to complete this year. Each month I’ll draw a number corresponding to one of those projects. I’m hoping that by the end of the year, I will have completed 3 quilts, 3 peyote stitch beading projects, 2 unfinished embroidery projects, and a handful of other projects waiting for attention. What about you? Anyone want to join me in working on UFOs (unfinished objects)?