Charming Stars

I have this amazing friend that has a birthday between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I knew this year with my new love of sewing and quilting that I wanted to make a quilt for her as a birthday gift. I only learned to sew and quilt this year, and I decided to make everyone in my family a quilt for Christmas, so for this project I thought I would go simple. I practiced one day sewing four charm packs together and I was pretty happy with the results. This friend came over during the summer for a quick cookout and wanted to see my new longarm (yeah, I had to get one of those and two new sewing machines this year). I have such a hard time with keeping gifts a secret. Well this friend really liked the quilt top I'd finished with her in mind, but she also kept gravitating back to another of my quilts in progress, my Nigh Sky quilt which is listed here as another of my projects. She just kept touching the fabrics, especially the oranges. So, what do you think I did? I decided to finish the original quilt for someone else (that's still in progress) and make a whole new charm pack quilt for my great friend. s I call this Charming Stars because I didn't want to do a plain charm quilt. I still used four charm packs to make a great throw size quilt, and I also snowballed some corners to throw in a few stars. Keep in mind I have that new longarm right? Well I was struggling with using it and wasn't enjoying it as I'd hoped. I thought it was just the major learning curve. My husband offered to buy me the robotics and software for Christmas! Can you believe it? Of course I said yes! So after six hours of troubleshooting my original setup, adjusting all my tensions, installing the robotics and computer system, and training; my longarm is running! This is the first quilt that I made from beginning to end and used both my domestic machine and my longarm to finish!