Heather Ross Mendocino Free-Style Stars

I've had a small stash of Heather Ross's Mendocino that I've been hoarding saving for a while now. I've added little pieces of it to some projects here and there but never much of it. I organized my stash a little this weekend and I pulled it out to finally make a quilt with it. I only had a 5.5" x WOF of the Swimming Sisters. I wanted to use that as the focal point. I love this print. So I cut my strip into 5.5" squares and just start making some stars with the rest of the Mendocino I had and a few other prints that coordinated with it. 

I could only get 8 Swimming Sisters squares from the piece I had. So I added a square of FMM blue seeds. I then laid out my blocks. Arranging....

 and arranging....

 and arranging some more....and then my oldest girl walks in and says why don't you put the blue seeds in the middle? I told her I tried it but it didn't look right. But I wanted it there too because I didn't really like how it looked in the corner. This was going to mean that I had to switch the centers on some of the blocks because I didn't want blocks with the same background fabric near each other, etc.. you know the deal. So I laid pieces of fabric on the center of the blocks that I wanted to switch to see if i liked it. And I did. So...

I took the seeds out of the orange octopi block and took the swimming sisters out of the posies block and switched them. Now, I might have just made new blocks if I had enough fabric, but I didn't.

I was not going to take the whole block apart so I only picked out enough stitches to get the center out. I used pins (a rarity) and sewed the centers in place on the sides.

Center block...half sewn in.

Back view...then I pressed everything and sewed the other seams back together.

and then rearranged....

and rearranged....

I think this is the layout I'm going with... maybe...





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