A STAR IS BORN!

I have thoroughly enjoyed all the Schnibbles since joining in on Another Year Of Schnibbles. Each project has challenged me in more ways that one. Some with colour, others with skill and precision, some with just being open to doing things you maybe are not too crazy about and then finding out you love it when it is finished. I find many times I am attracted to a pattern because it is done in colour and fabric I love. If I don't particularly like the fabric choices on the pattern cover I tend to pass by the pattern.

This month I was challenged in more ways than one. My "mission" should I choose to accept it was to make either
Hubble

or Bounce

I like the Bounce pattern and knew I would probably make it later, whereas Hubble was a different story.

Enter, "The Challenge".

I am not totally sold on medallion/lone-star type quilts; the fabrics on the pattern packet are not wrong/bad but just not my "cup of tea". And the biggest hurdle was the size of the project...it would involve more TIME, which is at a premium with all the travelling I have been doing as well as the fact that I am trying to make some Christmas gifts and it would also involve coordinating a larger amount of fabric.
You see, up to now, I have been using fabrics from my stash and not going out to purchase any fabrics for these projects.

My only purchase has been the patterns and of course MOnique Dillard's Fit To Be Geese rulers

I did a little browsing and searching on line about stars, and the Hubble telescope/camera. Now I am not an astronomer by any stretch of the imagination, but I did read something very interesting that fit right in with more of my desire to challenge myself with the Year of Schnibbles projects.

There is a star called ALPHA ORIONIS or Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetlejuice)
You see where I am going with this I bet...This being October, the month of Halloween; Beetlejuice being a Halloween movie...I thought a perfect alias for Hubble would be "Betelgeuse". What made it even more perfect was the fact that Alpha Orionis or Betelgeuse is a Red Super Giant Star
The very first star (other than the sun of course) to be photographed by the Hubble Telescope/camera! and guess what folks? I just happened to have over 60 DIFFERENT red fabrics in my stash...I mean it was serendipitous. This was the project for me!
Now that should have been enough challenges to overcome for one project but I added another. You see I didn't really care for all the big patches of solid colour in between the star points and because I was making the star in scrappy reds and scrappy white/creams, the only thing to do was make the large corners and triangles in scrappy white/creams as well. I knew it would make more work/time involved but that was what I felt it needed, so last weekend at our retreat I brought a large bag of red fabrics(over 60) and a large bag of creams and whites and started cutting 5 inch charms in both colours. It was a big job that was not completely finished at retreat and so I took it with me to another 2 day retreat at a friends camp in the woods and lo and behold amidst a very rainy, windy storm caused by Hurricane Sandy; A STAR WAS BORN!

Here she is in all her red and white glory...

BETELGEUSE (Beetlejuice)

Now you already know that I never just show you one Schnibbles. We are a Schnibbles Duo here at "It Is What It Is". 

Let me tell you about Sue's Schnibbles.

Like me she was not totally sold on Hubble (again that old problem of looking past the fabric to the actual pattern) and she absolutely loved Bounce, but decided that she would make a Christmas Star, so her fabric of choice was also what she had on hand, because like me, she has been working from her rather substantial stash on all these projects. 

Sue absolutely fell in love with a collection of christmas fabric last year and purchased a healthy bit of yardage as well as charm packs in the Countdown to Christmas line, by Sweetwater.

She believes you can never go wrong if you use "Countdown To Christmas".

Now Sue is a much faster and more organized quilter than her partner so she was able to finish her Hubble at the weekend retreat (partly because she was smart enough to sew her half square triangles before hand) and it turned out to be a real stunner! 

I can't remember if she gave her quilt an alias, but Shakespeare had it right when he said "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". So here is a Countdown to Christmas Schnibble called Hubble!

A very interesting thing happened in the making of these two Hubbles.

#1. Sue used solid pieces like in the pattern for her setting squares and triangles while I pieced mine.

#2. I used the black and white sketch diagram in the pattern to layout my star, while Sue used the pattern's cover photograph as her guide. This resulted in a little different value placement and thus making her centre star more visible than mine, while the large X that goes through the star is more visible visible in my quilt and almost totally disappeared in hers...interesting!

All in all though I think you will have to agree that they both turned out beautiful; so I stand corrected of an earlier statement I made; it should say

A PAIR OF STARS ARE BORN!

If anyone knows the stargazers over at the NASA, tell them to point Hubble in our direction for a peek at two new celestial bodies...they will not be disappointed!