Swinging On A Star

Would you like to swing on a star?
Carry moonbeams home in a jar
And be better off than you are
Or would you rather be a . . .
–Swinging On A Star
Music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Johnny Burke

One of the girls I work with is expecting a baby boy in a couple of weeks here. I was invited to her shower with a pretty good amount of lead time, so I decided to make a quilt. I had a panel that I bought about 4 years ago out of an all-you-can-stuff-in-a-bag-for-$5 bin. A tiny bit of the outside border had been nicked in the cutting process and I figured it would be a good quilt to practice free-motion on, and then maybe donate. I didn't have enough time to get a quilt pieced for the shower, so I used the panel plus fabric from my stash to make her a quilt.

As I mentioned, I bought the panel to practice FMQ. I outlined all the little bears in the center, plus the lines in the main borders of the design, which was good free-motion practice at following a line. But I specifically had stars and loops in mind for practice. And practice them I did. I did the blue borders on the left and right of the panel first and thought, "huh. Those didn't come out too badly." Then I did the green border with the stars on it in the panel and those loops and stars were decidedly better. Then I filled in the center of the panel {which may have been overkill, but it's done now} and when I got to the outer border, which is flannel I ordered on-line by mistake because it was on clearance but works perfectly in this quilt, I'd pretty much figured out how to keep the loops looking like loops. I'm still really slow, though, because when I come to a star, I have to think about where I want to end up and then go in the opposite direction.

In my blog travels I've seen a number of people who, when they finish a project, list out how many yards of fabric came out of their stash {and if they added any back in to stash}. I always find it interesting. Everything on this quilt came out of my stash {I love it when I actually have what will work!} except for the satin blanket binding. Here's my run-down:
½ yard green flannel for the borders
¼ yard light blue for side borders
¾ yard panel
1¾ yards flannel {used in place of batting; fused to Ultra-Cuddle for backing with Mistyfuse for added stability}
1¾ yards Ultra-Cuddle

Total out-of-stash: 5 yards

And because I've had this earworm for about the last four weeks {the first two lines are printed on the panel — in different fonts for each line, I might add}, I'm going to share with you. Bing Crosby's voice is pretty dreamy, if that helps.

So, you see it's all up to you
You can be better than you are
You could be swingin' on a star

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