One of my favourite quilt books is Legacy, about the life of Talula Gilbert Bottoms. Her productivity was amazing and even the ordinairy everyday covers she made for her many children were an inspiration. Although I love applique and complicated designs too, I'm always looking for great scrap patterns that I can make in between the 'good' quilts.

Apparently Talula pieced this design, called Glittering Stars many times and always had pieces cut to work on the diamond sections. I thought this might be a pattern that I could have on the go and cut my scraps up for every few weeks, so I gave it a whirl.

May I say, for the record, that I HATE curved piecing by hand and instead of whipping these little diamonds out by the fistful I ended up having to bribe myself to touch the things. I did it Talula's way of only having an eighth of an inch seam allowance on the curved sections and I really didn't like that either. So this isn't the perfect scrap pattern for me, but I do like the finished result- I just won't be doing any more.

I used Keryn's patterns from her Kaleidescope pack to quilt the stars, and there were lots of different designs for the cream background spaces; I had a lot of fun trying them out. I do like doing things freehand, but sometimes following patterns is just sheer fun, sew on the lines and you're done!