Galactic Cluster Formation

Day 270: Another project which was laid aside temporarily in favour of other crafts was the piecing of the Scrappy Star quilt I started in September. I had almost all the blocks completed, but ran into a snag when the fabric I had wanted to use for the "streets and alleys" between them was out of stock. Ten months later, it is still unavailable, and none of Joann's current offerings appeals to me, so I chose to go with white, which sets the stars off nicely in any event. The finished quilt top will be seven rows of nine blocks with a narrow white border and a coloured binding. One of the prints used in the stars came all the way from New Zealand (the blue nautical motif in the star five down from the top left). Curiously, when I first laid the stars out on the floor to arrange, I discovered I had 58. At that point, there were two ways I could have gone: omit two and make the quilt 7 x 8 (56 blocks, as was my original intention), or make five more stars for a galactic cluster of 63. A quick forage in my quilting box supplied the fabrics necessary for the additional blocks. I'm still trying to figure out how I managed to miscalculate in the first place.