Patternista Progress!

This weekend was busy, but the major thing I accomplished was putting together my quilt top using the fabric line Patternista. This was something I saw on line from Missouri Star Quilt Company which caused a bit of controversy among the quilters who saw the line when it first came out.

Some hated it--said it made them sick, nauseated to work on, not my style.....

Others gushed about how beautiful it is! I am one of the gushers!

I love this line of fabric! I also love the pattern, which is called "Stars Aligned".

I had 30 of the 50 star blocks made about a week ago, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to add the other 20 stars to make them "align"! Fellow online quilting community members tried to help, showed me pictures, but I must be dense because I didn't get it. I needed the pattern to finally show me how it went together. That came last Saturday.

As I whined about in my last post, I didn't actually get to do much in the way of quilting this past week. My daughter had a babysitting crisis, needing grandma on call, and I had tons of papers to grade and grades to compute before my spring break could actually start. That chore wasn't officially over till about 2 p.m. Friday. Of course, then it was time for a nap!

But I got going early Saturday morning. Sleep had eluded me by 4:30 a.m., even though I had only been between the sheets for about 5 hours. I just had to start putting my blocks together, so I couldn't sleep!

The stars go together by using three parts of the other 20 stars as sashing. The vertical points of the stars are sashing between the main blocks, and the horizontal points of the stars are sashing between the rows of blocks. You have to build this slowly and carefully, to make sure you get the right vertical point with the same horizontal point. I was about 2/3 done on Saturday when the body said "Enough!"

So here it is, the top is all pieced together. I think it turned out very well, and oh, so pretty! It is bright, to be sure! I need to make a black border and perhaps add an outside border of one of the prints from yardage, then really make my pillow cases.
Like most nosey cats, my boy Al had to jump on the quilt to make sure it was fitting for his lounge pad, he gave me about 3 minutes to take the picture before he was on it.

No, this quilt does not come from a pet-free home! Recipient (at this point it is unknown) will just have to deal with fur. In the meantime, I am sort of proud of this quilt because it has the most detail of any I've done so far, and most of my points do match up, not all, but most of them! I got better as I got closer to the top,catching on to how to make it all go together more smoothly.

Now, any suggestions as to how to quilt this beauty?