I really enjoyed completing these tops, and that was evident because I didn't let them sit in the cupboard for ages. I have so many projects awaiting decisions on borders that I think I must have some sort of problem, but I never lost interest in these two. The only real decision I made was which one would have the piano key border and which the checkerboard. 

The eagle eyed among you may notice this top is longer than the last photo of it. I had already decided to finish it at that size and added the final border of two inch squares but it really was too short. So I pieced another row of stars and sixteen patches and added the row of two inch squares to get it to this size. I like the way the top row of stars seems to float in the squares, if I make another top like this I'll bear it in mind.

Another thing that made finishing these easy was the way I constructed the little black borders.

They were only 1 1/4" cut and I added them to blocks of the pieced sections, piano key or four patches, in increments of 2"( the finished size of the pieces).  There are actually two black fabrics and I alternated them in random lengths, 12 1/2", 8 1/2" 6 1/2" as needed to get things to fit. It was very simple to make the borders the exact size they needed to be and there were handy seams on the body of the top to align everything exactly. A very painless way of putting two borders on indeed.

I have a collection of pale blue and purple fabrics, and now I'm wondering if I could do another version of stars in those colours. Hmm, or maybe I should put a few borders on those other projects
that are waiting...