A fun option would be to take that square, set it on point on the blue fabric and then applique on that and then do a little border ispired by the strip sets in the star. To  me putting stuff on point is a go to for adding an extra element.

AAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!     **How annoying**.

After a hiatus of several days, I returned to my SITD quilting on the queen sized quilt loaded on the longarm.   I'm carefully stitching along, some places are better than others, but not enough to cause me to rip it out and re-do.

I finished the full width (about 96"?) and I'm about to advance the quilt.   When I realized .....   aaarrrggghhhhh!!!! ... I have forgotten to stitch the vein in the leaf that is on either side of the vine!  aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!

It's easy and convenient and efficient to do that vein when doing the SITD around the leaf: when you're at the base of the leaf, just a quick trip up and back down the interior, then continue with the SITD.

But, since I have done ALL the SITD and idiotically FORGOT about the vein in EVERY SINGLE LEAF in the width, I now have to do each leaf SEPARATELY .. which means ALL THOSE THREAD TAILS will need to be dealt with separately.   aaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!!!   <thunk head on wall>

Feel your pain. Thread tails are not the worst thing but still not fun.

can you just follow the original line of quilting to add those veins?

OUCH, that does hurt.

I tried using the handle thingy, but ended up using this ruler, moving it round as needed.  Fewer wobbles.   Sometimes I was moving the ruler as I sewed, for some reason this worked better than the smaller ruler/handle.   I know you are done now but just as reference.

Dee, for *years*, I have used Deloa Jones' Appliglide tool for all of my curved SITD and close-in work.  It works very well for me.     What makes it work for me is that she has beveled the edge that slides along the fabric.  The beveling allows the edge to glide up and over the applique edge instead of getting hung up on it.  There is an opening that you put your machine foot into; it surrounds the foot.  You hold onto the tool and use it like a ... umm... handle? ... to move the foot around instead of the machine's own handles.    When you are able to control the movement of the foot *right at the foot*, you have much more control than when you are using the machine's handles.

Heh .. even so, there are spots when my moving wasn't as "controlled" as it should have been and the SITD isn't quite next to the applique seamline.  Ah well .. such is life. :-)

There are lots and lots of tools that have been invented, as a solution to a problem that some quilter had.  You never know which tool might be best for you until you see it in action or hear of a recommendation.

Deloa Jones' Appliglide tool: https://www.deloasquiltshop.com/products/appliguide

Suze (casuzenn) said:

can you just follow the original line of quilting to add those veins?

What I did was to closely backstitch/lockstitch at the base of each leaf, stitch the vein up and back, then finish with another close backstitch/lockstitch    Then, instead of doing the "proper" thing of burying all those tails, I just dragged the machine to the next leaf and repeated the process.  At the end, I clipped all the tails closely, since I had securely backstitched every time.    I kinda consider that a "cheat" but it works. :-)

Dee in TX (DBRADFOR3) said:

I'm going to give it to her for Christmas.

You can enjoy it until then.  At least you are keeping it in the family if not in your house.

Ugh.  Remind me, if I EVER even faintly suggest piecing this top again, to ... oh I don't know ... do something drastic.   It's a very pretty pattern and I certainly enjoyed EPP it together.

BUT ... the finished star block is BIGGER than the workspace on my longarm.  I can't do an entire star at one time.  I need to quilt PART of the star then advance it to get to the next part.  Ugh.

I can do the quarter star and half star blocks fine .. but the whole star?  Nope.  It's a major PITA.

I have, however, done the lower end ... the 2 quarter stars in the corners and the one half star in between the quarter stars.  I've also quilted swags in the border.  I like swags; they look pretty  Mine are basic .. no geegaws in the center portion.  In this case, it's just two swags and then piano keys along the outer edge of the swag.

If you take a look at the lower edge of the quilt, you'll see the 2 swags.  Then, from the lower edge of the swag to the raw edge of the quilt are the straight lines for the piano keys.   

I've taken LOTS of pictures of the templates I used to create the swags and what I did at the corners.  I know it's going to be a "while" before I get to the top edge of the quilt and in the interim, I will probably forget what I did on the lower edge.  Because I know I won't want to unroll the quilt (because I'm lazy), I'm taking pictures now to remind myself.

AND ... I've already had a horrible screw-up in quilting one of the full stars.  My sketch is to put a single feather in each of the star points.  The fabrics I used are fairly busy and it's not easy to see where I drew the spine to give me a guide.  Sure enough, I messed up on the actual quilting of the spine+feathers so that I'm off one star point.  Ugh.   However, the saving grace is that this fabric is SO busy, you can't actually *tell*.  I've squeezed in the top of the feather in the star point where it is supposed to go, so it "looks" like a full feather is there but unless you're tracing the stitching with your fingers, there's no way the eye can discern the screw-up.   Nope, I'm not gonna fix it properly.  DD#2 doesn't quilt.  She doesn't even sew. She's never gonna know or detect it.  She's gonna love the over all effect. :-)   Yes, that makes me a VERY lazy quilt and quite possibly an inadequate mother, but that's the way the cookie crumbles these days.  :-)