April Block

Yup - that said April.  I can admit that even though its ALMOST June I've fallen a bit behind with the Lucky Stars Block-of-the-Month.  Sheesh.  I mean, I finished the Keystone Lodge quilt, created my friend's competition suit and made a shirt.  I'm giving myself permission to be behind.

Since I hadn't worked on anything for this BOM since March Break...I felt like I was starting over.  I had to remind myself of every step.  I.e., step one - cut out the templates:

This part is a little boring - I won't lie

Step two is the hardest part.  This is where I have to audition my fabrics and figure out what the heck this thing is going to look like when its all finished.  It involves creeping flickr to see what other people have done and trying to fold my mound of fabrics into a shape that somehow mimics what the finished block will look like.

See?!?  I have to envision this as 25% of a finished block and then extrapolate that to the other 75%.

Also, I'm a bit out of paper-piecing practice.  I kept screwing up the first square as right side out and then fitting the others as right side in.  I think I might have had to rip five different seams today.

That hex piece should be on the other side of the totally upside-down blue piece.  Frustrating.

I finally got all 8 of the templates made and sewed the triangle shapes into square quarters.  Then I had a choice on my hands.  There were two options for putting together the block.  Option one was this:

This block is called the Black Hole Star - this is how Elizabeth (the creator of this BOM) put hers together.

Option two was this:

This seems to be the way a lot of folks are choosing to put theirs together.  I checked flickr.

I ended up initially thinking I was going to go with the original design but once the block was laid out - I shifted thinking.  I was totally jazzed about the second option.  So that's the way I put it together.  Hey Buttons, you want to examine my paper-pieced points?

And finally, because I need to be inspired enough to finish my May block before June hits, I took a picture of all my months so far so I could get a check on my progress.

Please excuse the bluey tone of this photo!

I think I'm REALLY going to like this quilt once I get all the blocks done!