WiP Wednesday - Oh My Stars!

When I was at Quilt Market back in October, I met the amazing Aneela Hoey, and got my hands on a mini charm pack of A Walk In the Woods.  I was so excited, but really had no idea with the cute little thing.  Finally, I got the idea to do something with HSTs (I'm telling you, it's my new obsession!), and decided to do a weird kind of diamond, and would eventually make it into a quilt top for a baby quilt.  I did the diamond part back in December, but this past week, I finished up the whole quilt top.

I already have the binding fabric picked out, and I'm hoping to get that cut today.  But I can't finish this baby until the yardage of A Walk In the Woods is released, because I want to get one of the prints for the back.

I started a random project this week, too.  In my last post, I mentioned Jeni's Half-Square Triangle Block of the Month, and I made the January block for someone in my bee.  Well, I liked the block so much, I thought it would be cool to follow along with this BOM myself.  I had a layer cake of Half Moon Modern that I wanted to use, so I was trying to think about what a good background fabric would be.  Finally, I decided on gray linen.  That's another obsession of mine.  I thought a dark gray would really make the vibrant colors of the Half Moon Modern pop.  But I didn't want to use the linen that I used for Kelly B.'s pillow, because that's a straight-up linen, and it's a little difficult to work with.  I wanted a linen/cotton blend, and have been seeing yard-dyed Essex linen by Robert Kaufman alot on Flickr lately.  I'm a big fan of Essex linen already, so I knew what I would be working with.  Thankfully, Alice at Fresh Modern Fabric had the yard dyed linen in black, which is just what I needed!  (I met Alice at Market, and have bought a couple things from her Etsy shop before - she has a great selection, and she puts fabric samples in with your order.  I love that!)

Yesterday, I was finally able to work on the block.  I really like how it turned out!  And as I'm working more with HSTs, I'm getting better with the points of the triangles actually being pointy!

In conjunction with that BOM series, I thought it would be fun to follow along with Faith's Solstice Stars Series, and eventually, but the blocks from both series into the same quilt.  So yesterday, I was also able to crank out the two blocks that were already posted. 

Up first is the block posted 2 weeks ago, the Ribbon Star.

And then the block from last week, which is a paper-pieced block called the Whirling Star.

I think I don't love the gray print in the corners of this block, but there's no way I'm going back to change it.  So it'll just have to do.

However, I am loving these blocks together!  And I'm really loving the gray linen with the bright colors.  This quilt will be for our couch, and I think the gray linen makes it masculine enough that my husband wouldn't feel weird snuggled up under it.

And both Jeni and Faith give fantastic instructions!  I'm very easily confused, but they write clear, concise instructions, and have lots of helpful pictures.  If you haven't joined in either of these series, I encourage you to!

In other WiP news, my due date is in just a few days, and apparently, this baby still thinks he's a work in progress.  But hopefully I won't be posting for WiP Wednesday next week, because he'll be out in the world!

I'm linking up to WiP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.  Check out what other people are working on this week!