After a recent block where fussy cutting proved to be a challenge, I was a little worried about the challenge this block would present. It had the same issue as that earlier block, where pieces of the patterned fabric touched each other. How could I avoid chopping off motifs at the seams?

Since a good portion of the print is just random tiny dots, I considered fussy cutting it so that there would be a flower motif centered in the middle, and the points of the star would have dots only.

But having one (and only one) flower motif in the middle square ended up not being as easy as I hoped for. Partial flower bits kept trying to make their way into any arrangement I came up with.

And then there were the borders … the flower motifs were too close together to find a 5” strip of fabric with no stray petals or leaves in it, much less four strips.

In the end, I took inspiration from an antique quilt I recently acquired (more on that in my next post), and decided to not be fussy at all, letting the chips (and the flower petals) fall where they may.

So, I just cut out all the pieces without regard to the fabric print, but I think there is enough plain old dotted background that it reads okay. I did move around some of the triangles and border pieces prior to stitching, to ensure as pleasing an arrangement as possible.

With the virtual retreat at the beginning of the month, November was quite productive for the UFO challenge. I completed a whopping three Dear Jane blocks, plus sashed two blocks together, and completed 18 triangle motifs on the rainbow quilt:

This star block definitely feels like nothing more than a practice block for the dreaded G6 block. And I guess the practice went okay, although I did notice while piecing the points of the star that I have a tendency to stitch a little too far into the seam allowance as I get to the end of the seam, making some of the finished pieces bigger than intended at the edges.

I need to practice reining in that tendency going forward. That G6 block is going to be hard enough to piece even if those triangles come out exactly the right size and shape. At least I had the good sense to choose a very small-scale print for the tiny pieces in the G6 star, so I can be an unfussy cutter for that one too.