Portsmouth Star for Ona Judge Staines

I’m joining in on only one Block of the Month (BOM) this year – so far! It is an irresistible rabbit hole of delightful choices out there for quilters. 









I’m doing the Threads of Memory blocks by Barbara Brackman. I joined this one because I get to read some quilt history each month too – the original reason I fell in love with quilting was reading the stories of the quilters themselves. 


I did make one change to the block – I have a hard time not changing things up!
If you look at the original block you’ll see the corners are pieced as two half triangles. 
At first I wanted to set the inner squares like in the above photo – with the fabrics repeating on an angle.
To do this, I had to cut my pieces a different way: I made the background fabric into a rectangle (2 1/2 x 4 1/2) and a  2 1/2 inch square.









I really liked the light triangle option until I looked at the digital picture and realized the white blurred into the star points. So I changed to a blue fabric. 







Then when I saw how the blue looked. . . I didn’t like it either! 
The blue square looks like it needs to go into the points between the star tips – it just kind of floats into nowhere!







I turned the half square blocks around to see what it would look like – again the red looks unfinished.


So, when all else fails – make the block the way the designer intended! LOL









One bonus with the way I cut the background fabric is
that all the words read the right way 🙂
Another bonus – I’m trying to use up Christmas fabrics and get to make some new blocks too!






Barbara puts up a new block at the end of each month.
Here’s January’s block if you want to join in.






With Joy,


Sarah Vee


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