I love this block design, and I don’t love how I quilted it. Definitely a live-and-learn moment.

The block features four happy little dancing stars. In the original pattern, the stars are colorful and the background is plain, but I saw another quilter’s variation (she is Rat Ferré from Barcelona, but I can’t find her blog or a photo of the block outside of Facebook) with a gradient-rainbow background and white stars. I loved it so I modeled mine after that colorway and I was really happy with the way it turned out.

Then I decided to quilt it with diagonal parallel lines, which seemed a good idea in theory. In practice, it broke up the dancing stars in a way that I don’t like. I try not to rip out quilting stitches unless there’s a visible bird’s nest or other technical problem, so I’m going to live with it, but in retrospect I wish I had chosen a pattern that emphasized the star shapes rather then cutting through them. Lesson learned!

Flights of Friendship is block 40 of the Splendid Sampler and was designed by two sisters, Barb Groves and Mary Jacobson.