Oorah Stars

What do you make for a single man that is traditional and former Marine??? You make what I call "OOrah Stars" it's a combination of a traditional star and Irish chain in royal blue, gold, scarlet and white.

The original design from Quick Quilts from the Heart
 by Liz Porter and Marianne Fons

I switched to blue stars, scarlet Irish chain and the background was split between gold and white.

Then I cut, and cut and cut...

Strips were sewn together first, because they required, yes more cutting...

I placed all my cut pieces in quart sized
baggies and labeled them.

Next came sewing, and sewing, and sewing...

The blue triangles get sewn to the yellow or white triangles. You HAVE to line them up perfectly or your points will not line up. I did it all in strip piecing, so it was just lllooonnnggg strips of each piece sewn together, After I finished one set, I would iron and cut and sew some more. As the days progressed the strips got shorter and shorter.

I finally had my blocks all done. I laid everything out and sewed them into rows and then the quilt top.

It needed more so I did what everyone does and I added borders.








A thin red one and a thick blue one. 

Basting was awful!!! I didn't have help and it all shifted. I didn't find out until I was almost done with the quilting. I cried, I cut off extra backing and sewed it where it was needed. I finished quilting in straight lines through the Irish chain blocks and 1/4" inside each star (watching Eureka on Netflix helped with the quilting) and did the binding. The pattern called for 2" strips for the binding, so not big enough! I suggest 2 1/2" - 3" strips.

The quilt turned out nice, Nice enough to get 2nd place in the county fair for bed-sized, machine pieced, hand quilted. Now lets hope that former Marine loves it.