TGIFF! - Converging Stars...Fizzle Out

Welcome to TGIFF! My finish today is six years in the making so it feels like a big TGIFF! It was started for a guild challenge in 2006, but I had problems with it from the start. I tried broderie persé (before I knew what broderie persé was) with the stars, but my machine at the time hated the gold thread for the satin stitching on the stars. When I got a new machine, the satin stitching worked fine, but then I didn't know how to quilt it.

Pulling it out this week, I thought I'd try the quilting technique that I'd learned from Heather Lair this summer, but with gold thread. I don't think it turned out as well as Heathia, but I still love the technique and the texture it gives. I did a non-mitred facing and c'est fini! Not loving this one, but it's done and I'm celebrating it because I learned a lot in making it and it's off my WIP/UFO list!

My guild is collecting placemats for the holidays for Meals on Wheels. This has a bit of a festive feel to it, right? I think I'll donate it to them. Maybe it will cheer someone up this Christmas.

Converging Stars

Quiltography: "Converging Stars," by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau, Ottawa, 18" by 20", 2012.

Converging Stars - A Work in Progress

Today is TGIF Friday! at Quokka Quilts. I don't have a finish this week to share, but if you do, you can go link up. I'll be checking out the finishes a little later and I'm working hard to have a finish for next week when I host.

I made very good progress on my Castle Peeps quilt yesterday so that just might be the one that I'll share next week.

The other contender for next week is a work in progress/unfinished object that I had in my WIP Wednesday list - Converging Stars.

I started this wallhanging in 2006 as part of the Common Thread Quilt Guild's annual challenge. The challenge was to use four (or five?) fabrics prominently on the quilt top along the theme of "The Year I Was Born" or "A Star is Born". The fabrics were the black and white, the red, the gold, the green (I think) and the gorgeous celtic fabric (no selvage so I don't know what it's called) that you see in the photo below.

I played with the "Year I Was Born" theme for a bit, but didn't come up with anything inspired so I went with the "A Star is Born" theme. I was reading a Ricky Tims' book on convergence quilts and thought I could give that a try. I pulled out the purple and perhaps the green from my stash to make the background convergence grid. I then fussy cut the celtic and black and white fabric to make stars.  I arranged the stars to go from black and white in the lower left to the colourful stars in the upper right - stars are born.

So where did I get stuck? Machine applique-ing the stars. My machine protested again and again and repeatedly refused to satin or zig zag stitch the stars. Grrr! So I didn't finish the challenge.

A couple of years later, I went back and satin stitched the stars when I got a new machine. And I sandwiched it, but couldn't machine quilt it the way I wanted to.  Yep, same story -- I couldn't free motion quilt so back into the WIP/UFO pile it went. Sigh!

Fast forward to this week, I pull it out and this is where it is at:

Now for the free motion quilting...echo? stars? Any suggestions?