Stars and Stuff

I've been writing blog posts in my head, but not getting them done because I've been compulsively, obsessively, diligently sewing stars until yesterday when my machine broke :(

She sucked up some thread that got under the bobbin case and jammed. I cleaned her, rethreaded her and gave her a new needle, but all I get is an E1 error, which means circuit board. I've been to forums and emailed the company, but everyone says "back to the dealer", although the company (I'm not mentioning any names) that makes her always says that, sometimes after quoting from the manual, like I can't read. The forums have always helped, but not this time. It wouldn't be a huge problem except I live on an island and the closest dealer is 2.5 hours away, 5 hours to drop off and 5 hours to pick up. Plus there's the scary factor, the dealer is in a strip mall with a biker bar next door, they have a sign on the door saying not to wear your colors inside, safety first. The only time I've felt safe up there was when the police were in the parking lot arresting someone. There is another place about 20 minutes further, but I have a feeling you have to go back to where you bought it. 

We've all seen the blog posts where people are buying a new machine and want to know opinions, here's my advice: it's all about the dealer, no one really wants to think about what if it breaks, I certainly didn't, but it's important. 

Anyway, let's talk stars. When I first starting to teach myself how to make a quilt, stars looked hard and the first one I made was hard, it had inset pieces and made me crazy. The bloggers festival got me thinking again about them and I actually have learned that you don't have to do insets. So here's what I've been making.

I love making string quilts, so string stars makes sense. 

This is a twin size quilt, biggest I've ever made, the quilting was a bear. I'm pretty sure this will be my quilt for the Pets on Quilts Show, which is coming in August.

I saw these colors on Pinterest and fell in love, but while I was pulling the brights I came across a pile of pastels left over from a baby quilt, so I made two at once. Here's a link to the original post for this block. By the way, if you're interested in Pinterest, SewCalGal has a very insightful post about it today. I'm not much for Facebook, but I've been enjoying Pinterest.

Pictures make me see that the points don't match up, but I don't care. 

The last two won't be quilted until I've taken that 10 hour drive, I have other machines, but I really don't like quilting on them. I will have to do the free motion challenge on one of them, but that looks like a perfect excuse so that's why it won't look so good ;)

Thanks for stopping by,

Dana