Lucky Star WIP - Building Blocks Tuesday

I have no new blocks to share this week, as I have been busy with other things.  One of which was pulling out an extremely OLD UFO, my Lucky Star quilt.  Here is one of the blocks from the 2013 BOM.



Around the end of 2014, I finally finished all the blocks and put the top together.



There it sat for a ridiculously long time until I finally got around to basting it in March of 2015.



I then folded it up and put it into a drawer while I contemplated how I wanted to quilt it.  In truth, I am still figuring that part out.  But as part of a challenge issued by my Lazy Bum group on Flickr, I pulled out the Lucky Star quilt, took all the pins out and loaded it up on my longarm.

First, I should explain that the Lazy Bums are a group dedicated to encouraging one another to finish up UFO's specifically.  Each month they choose one of my UFO's from a short list and challenge me to work on it.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.  Any progress is good.  I am about to start what I think is my 5th year with the Lazy Bums and the Lucky Star quilt has been on my list the entire time, making slow progress which is always cheered on.

Deciding to load up the Lucky Star on the longarm added an additional dimension to the challenge.  I am still not great at quilting on the longarm.  I struggle with all but 3 designs, and those are still pretty shaky.  Straight lines are tough (I have a ruler, but my table extension for ruler work broke within the first 5 minutes of using it and I haven't gotten a replacement yet), and stitching in a ditch is amazingly difficult -- and of course, a paper pieced quilt like this benefits greatly from stitching in the ditch.  Well, you can only learn by practicing right?



I've only finished the top border and I've started working on the first row of blocks.  One thing I have to say about the longarm - once a quilt is loaded, you pretty much have to finish it before you can move on to another.  Unlike some of my partially completed quilts that I've done with my domestic where I've quilted a bit, gotten tired, and put them aside for an indefinite period of time.

I know this sounds pretentious, but I am trying to remind myself that the quilting might look terrible in the end.  I just don't have the control that I have accumulated with the domestic and have come to desire of my work.  I've already ripped out a few things that just weren't working out, that I knew I couldn't live with. But, I persevere with the thought that this is a learning quilt.  I'm learning that control.  I'm learning to use my ruler.  I'm learning to go slow and stay in the ditch.  These were things I had to learn with the domestic.  I practiced on quilts, lots of them.  It took a while, but I got better with each quilt.  I just have to keep trying.

What blocks have you been working on this week?  I would love to see.  Link up your fabulous blocks.  You put a lot of hard work into them - show them off!  This free linky will stay open until the first Monday of next month, but I will repost it every Tuesday until a new month starts.

Rules:

1) Please link up only to the page on your blog showing your wonderful blocks, not just the blog homepage.  Flickr and Instagram pictures are also OK.
2) Make sure to put your blog name as the description so people know where they are going or the name of your block!
3) Please grab my button and post it in your blog post or sidebar.
4) Visit other linky participants!

Thanks for reading,

Jennie





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