it's in the stars

That's what I'm calling this quilt I made using a bunch of prints from Lizzy House's Constellations line. It's no secret that I adore Lizzy and think she designs beautiful prints, so it was super-exciting and wonderful to get to work with these. I wanted to make something that would play with the whole theme of stars and constellations without being too literal. I originally wanted to make a huge mariner's star (playing on theme of stars as a guide for navigation) but went with a big ol' NY Star and the idea of an astrological chart instead. I made my own template for the rays (beams?) and the outer ring and sewed in that center circle essentially using the same principle as that 6-minute circle method Lizzy told me about. However, I didn't do it exactly like that. I didn't use glue. I went with the more labor intensive version (6 of one, half a dozen of the other, really) and used about a million pins. And I stitched slowly. Very, very slowly. It was worth it, though, as I am pretty thrilled with how it came out:

And I actually thought even with the pinning it was really easy, a breeze really. There's more discussion about how to sew set-in circles in this Flickr group, with links to different online tutorials. The entire Constellations line hit fabric stores just before the holidays, and most places are selling out of it and fast. Gather here still has some in stock and will be getting more soon, so do check it out.