When I got this lovely star fabric from my friend Lisa, I knew I wanted to use it for the corner block with the stars on it. Star fabric for a star block is so very meta.

The pattern for this corner block is quite similar to the previous block I did, except it’s turned around so all the tiny seam allowances are concentrated around the center square. I figured the assembly would be pretty easy, but ironing the finished product would be a bear (which turned out to be true).

Of course, this block has also got two appliquéd stars – one in the center of the square block, and one in the point. I had big plans to make these appliqué stars the best appliqué stars ever. Reference books were consulted; YouTube videos were watched. I’m not sure that the results live up to the hype. Those points were so pointy that it was difficult to stuff all the seam allowance under there.

However, I am quite pleased with how well the star points align with the edges of the center square. The points are supposed to go right to the edge, so there was a lot of potential for star points to be cut off, but all of my star points are still intact.

The corner blocks seem to take a long time, and this one was my February Dear Jane block for our UFO Challenge, so I was grateful that I got a head start, beginning construction while it was still January. At our first weekly sew-in, I spent the entire 3 hours appliquéing one star and cutting out about 40 small pieces. I felt like I got very little accomplished, but having all those pieces cut and marked meant I could hit the ground running at my next sewing session.

I did get the block done in February, but it was the only Dear Jane block I completed in February. I also sewed another row on the rainbow quilt, and I quilted two leaves, three berries, and a swirl motif on the wholecloth quilt. UFO mission accomplished for the second month!

Of course, it’s now mid-April and I’m just getting around to blogging about my February progress … maybe I need to declare my blog a UFO and make an effort to get caught up on UFBAs (unfinished blog articles) as well.

While the motifs on the star fabric seemed to perfectly align with the star block design, as I was sewing it, I started to worry that the fabric was too light of a dark green compared to the other corner I’ve done. But then I reminded myself of how concerned I was that the fabric I used for the center block of this quilt was too bluish … which turned out looking just fine.

The real clincher in my decision, though, was this block in the rainbow quilt. I’ve been secretly referring to this one as the 70’s necktie block:

Two loud fabrics don’t make a quiet block, and looking at it by itself kind of hurts my eyes. But once it is surrounded by other blocks, it blends in pretty well:

Ultimately, I decided that these two Dear Jane corner blocks would be aligned at opposite ends of the quilt and there would be plenty of distance between them to soften any color differences. Now I can start daydreaming about which dark green fabrics to use for the remaining two corner blocks.