Tula Palooza Wonky Star

Hello everyone!

I am joining in another IG sewalong. This one is called Tula Palooza. The idea is they give you a block design every month, and you are meant to make a quilt top using the block and fabrics by the designer Tula Pink.

Now frankly there is no way on Earth I can complete a quilt top every month. I don't sew that fast and I don't have the time. So I am joining in in my own way - making one of each block (or more if I choose), and I will put them all together into a sampler type quilt at the end of the year.

Here's my stash of Tula Pink fabrics.

I got the Halloween ones (the De La Luna line) for my La Passacaglia quilt. I haven't blogged about that yet, but don't worry, I will soon! The fabrics are particularly good for fussy cutting and have a lovely bright colour pallate that allows you to mix and match between the different lines. Not that I normally worry about restricting myself to one designer or fabric collection in my work.

The block for this month is called Wonky Star. You can read the tutorial for it here.

I really wanted to use the jellyfish in the centre. I love jellyfish. The way they move is awesome. Here is a video of some from a recent trip to Birmingham Sea Life Centre.

Most of the Tula fabrics I have contain large scale images that I didn't really want to cut up into small triangles. So I chose a cat's eye print, and for added fun, I decided to maintain the directionality on the print.
Here's my finished block.

I used smaller pieces of the cat's eyes than the pattern suggested, so it's particularly wonky. Whites are from my stash. I am aiming to keep the backgrounds quite scrappy to give me more freedom of choice for future blocks (because I don't know what they are yet).

My husband says the random triangles make him think of his Christmas present wrapping. That is not a flattering opinion. I really like the wonkiness.

I am proud of my piecing on this one. Look how neat this corner is!

It's been fun doing some traditional piecing instead of English Paper Piecing. I am thinking about making more smaller wonky stars as filler blocks when I start to get a sense of what the other blocks are like. As they are not designed to go together, I am expecting a variety of sizes over the year.

I like sewalongs, seeing the variety everybody does with what is often a simple instruction is so much fun. It's a pity so many of them have such short timeframes. Sewing a lot by hand means I can't reasonably expect to meet the deadlines, especially with quilting. This one doesn't require quilting, but I have seen many that allow a week, or even only a couple of days to quilt a large top. Quilting is often treated as a quick finishing touch, rather than something you might want to plan and carry out carefully. And it really doesn't occur to the organisers that people might want to quilt something by hand. Watching them can give me some real tension between FOMO and fear of missing deadlines.

So instead of watching them go by or feeling anxious all the time, I have decided to join in at whatever pace I like, in whatever way I like. At one block a month, I can join in the fun and still have a great quilt at the end. It means I won't be eligible for most the prizes, but that isn't that important to me as I rarely win anyway.

Thanks for reading!

Linking up to the Peacock Party again.