Star Light, Star Bright...

Why doesn't this star right look right?

Randi at The Barrister's Block posted the next three blocks for her quilt-along this week, plus bonus blocks, just for fun.  I was happy to have more triangles to practice, but the triangles turned out not to be my biggest problem.

One bonus block was a scrappy star.  I haven't done anything scrappy before -- like any new cook, I'm still following the recipes pretty much exactly.  I arranged all the units as carefully as I could so that units with the same fabric weren't adjacent to each other.  I stitched it up, pressed everything out and went to my cutting mat to square up the block.  The resulting triangles and matched seams were OK (some obviously better than others, but I didn't feel like ripping and re-sewing the poor ones).  But the whole block looked wrong!

See all the places where the same fabric is in adjacent blocks or, even worse, right next to itself?  Ugh!

But wait!  That's not a star!  The two center strips got reversed!  Dumb, dumb, dumb!

I almost decided to start over from scratch.  On second thought, ripping and re-sewing would at least be a good test of my sewing accuracy.  Fortunately, I hadn't actually trimmed the block yet.

Rip, rip, rip, sew, sew sew.  Ta da!

Scrappy Star

That's more like it!  The triangles even came out a little better, though one corner of the block is a teeny bit shy of the 6-1/2" mark.  I'd still like to figure out how to press the seams smoothly where triangles are involved.  I did do something different here, I pressed the seams open instead of to one side.  That helped.

The second bonus block is called Pap's Birds.  I love this one.  It went together smoothly and the triangles came out nice and pointy.  Plus, I got to use two of the fabrics that I bought at the Long Island Quilt Show.

Papa's Birds bonus block