Finished at last - five year old swap blocks

Another finish to report.

This is a group of blocks I swapped with online quilters five years ago...  I'm over blushing about how old my UFOs are and just celebrate the finishes when they happen.  I put the last stitches into the binding around 1:00 am this morning and will be sleeping under this quilt when I finally get around to going to bed. Hooray! The colours on this quilt make me happy and lift my spirits - though the quilt seems better suited for spring or summer rather than fall/winter decor. It brightened up my bedroom like a sunny day and that was good enough for me. The pattern we chose for our swap was taken from the book Nine Patch Reunion by Terry Atkinson.  It seemed a good choice for the different skill levels of the participating swappers.

I flipped the quilt up to show you a pic of the backing.  My green plaid wasn't quite long enough so I sliced through the fabric and added in a row of 8.5" orphan star blocks.

I started making 8.5" sawtooth stars some years ago and like my box full of scrappy four patches, didn't notice how many I had made until I got into the triple digits.  I don't know why, but I can hyper-focus on the details of a task to the point that I don't notice the bigger picture.  In the case of the star blocks, it started innocently enough as an exercise in perfecting my seam allowance and getting perfect crisp star points.  I resolved to make stars until I felt proficient and got in the habit of making them.  That habit landed me with a stack of star blocks for which I had no specific plan.  I finished a quilt for my mother using up some of the stars, blogged about in early September.  Here's the pic again.  I named this one My Mom's Garden Sparkles.

I still have a stack of red and blue stars in my orphan block box.  I think I've mentioned before that I seem to go about things the long-way around.  While others pick a pattern and sew components for it, I seem to be quite happy sewing components and then finding a way to use them up at a later date.