Birthday Stars, the back story

I finished this quilt on Sunday afternoon at my monthly Brown Bagger quilt meeting. Every quilt has a story, but this one's a little longer than most...

Rainbow batik birthday stars!

I received these blocks for my birthday in our 2000 birthday swap. Yes, 2000. This is not a typo. I always intended to make more blocks so it would be a bed size quilt but I never got around to it.

My next idea was that I was only going to use the blocks that were in jewel tones (blues, purples, greens) and make a table runner or a wall hanging.

Finally I brought the star blocks to a Brown Baggers' meeting and my fellow quilters encouraged me to use all the blocks and helped me lay them out in a pleasing order. There is one leftover block. It will probably float around my quilting room forever.

I assembled the center of the quilt in December of 2013 and then it sat around some more. I was thinking of creating a fancy outer border that would continue the blue stars...

In 2016 while working on my Rainbow Connection quilt, inspiration struck again. I had many leftover strips in short lengths from making the blocks and they were also colorful batiks. They would make a great border for my Birthday Stars! The border finally got added to my quilt in January 2017.

Extra credit goes to:

• Joannie C. and Jo Ann E. who gave me fabric for the back of the quilt when I finished the top unexpectedly at a quilt weekend and had to layer it RIGHT AWAY!
• Kim P. for her beautiful machine quilting.
• Joan S. for loaning me blue thread yesterday so I could sew the binding down to the front of the quilt! Again, I wasn't expecting to put the binding on yesterday, but divine intervention occurred.

Thanks Gals!

Instant cuteness! Just add LarryPug and Elvis!

Good thing that batik never goes out of style! Like fine wine, sometimes my projects need to sit for a while... Does this ever happen to you?

Thanks for visiting!

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy