A few years ago, Mom gave me three of the pared down charms square packs of Andover's Swoon line. I say pared down because when one says "charm pack," one usually thinks of Moda's Charm Packs that have 40 or more pieces in it. Thankfully (for so many reasons) there are other companies doing these packs instead of just Moda - the difference is, is that their packs don't always have as many pieces in it. These packs from Andover were small - 3 colorways with maybe 5 or 6 pieces per colorway, and only one piece of each per pack.
I loved this fabric but never found a good pattern for it, and the yardage of it is long, long gone. I decided it was time to just wing it and use it. I wanted to do a quilt of Friendship Stars, the stars that to me always looked like ninja throwing stars
Friendship Star (Left)
Ninja Star (Right)
Totally the same thing, amiright.
After I sewed all the blocks, I was one block shy of a 5x5 quilt...so there's an empty space for the block that will feature the owner of all those fancy pantsy throwing stars....the Urban Ninja! I haven't drawn him out yet...but soon.
Other than being able to be silly about the ninja theme, the thing I'm enjoying most is that even though the pattern itself is simple, it's forced me outside of my comfort zone. Typically, I wouldn't just put all those colors together in the stars themselves - I don't usually work with an orgy of pattern AND color together, so having all that business in the stars was a little something different for me. Also, I'm a big fan of tonal prints in unexpected colors for backgrounds, and I don't usually use solids, but this one I did use just solids for the backgrounds. And, I prefer applique to piecing, so winging even a simple pieced block without a guide is different for me too.
The Urban Ninja snuck up on me and changed my style for this quilt! I don't know when I'll be getting it quilted...hey, maybe I'll try my hand at quilting a bigger quilt too!
Totally ninja stars.
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