Ohio Star progress

Before I covered my sewing room in pastel fabric I knew that I had to try and clean up the mess from the quilts I  was currently working on.  So I sewed like a maniac and got the Ohio Stars in one piece, just to get it out of the way.  While I was searching through my stash for material for the donation quilts I came across a piece of shirting that I thought would be perfect for the sashing.  It was, so I cut the whole lot up and sewed the blocks together in a few nights.

It wasn't without incident.  I often cut the sashing fabric into strips the width of the blocks, and then crosscut them into the sashing width.  This usually makes better use of the fabric, and I like it better than cutting 40 or so 1.5" strips.  I didn't have any to spare, so I couldn't use the GO Cutter.  Anyway, I was congratulating myself that I had cut the 6.5" strips I needed, and had just enough fabric leftover to make a spare 1.5" strip.

Alas, I'd cut one strip at 6" instead.  So that was 28 sashing pieces that were too short!!  That was a fun moment.  Don't cut things late at night, I told myself. I'd already googled the fabric and knew that it was from a Jo Morton range about 5 years ago, so no chance of getting any more.  I did  the only thing I could, which was sew those pieces into a big long strip, and recut at 6.5".  It didn't look too bad, and I spread the pieced sashes throughout the quilt to help disguise them.

It was hanging on the workroom wall and Mereth took over the border scraps from my Charm Square 9patch and said, "You have to use this as the border". And I agree.  I'm not trying to mitre that print though, it gave me fits last time, so I'll put a block in the corner. And there will be a mid blue spacer border all round.

I will definitely make more Ohio Stars, maybe in different colours, because I just love putting the blocks together.  There are so many antique examples for inspiration, I'm sure I'll have another one under way before too long.