Goodbye, June —  hello, July! Can you believe the year is half over? I swear, the first six months of 2014 have just flown by.

June was a productive month for Jennifer Varney of Hudson, New Hampshire. In addition to revamping the center medallion of her Reach for the Stars sampler quilt earlier this month — you can read about here — she has completed four new blocks.

Here is Jenn’s Block 8:

Block 9:

Jennifer modified Block 9 so that the center blocks would form stars. I like it much better this way than the original design. (In fact, I did the same thing on my version!)

She skipped Block 10 — more on that later. Here is Block 11:

She modified Block 11 so the center is simply a four-patch rather than eight half-square triangles.

My personal favorite in this group of four is her Block 12:

The border print makes the block appear much more complicated than a nine-patch with four-patches in the corner. Check out the fantastic optical illusion of curves when all the pieces are square.

The original Reach for the Stars quilt was designed by Terry Krysan of Lakeville, Minnesota and presented in Quilter’s Newsletter magazine as a series quilt beginning last fall. As you can see, the quilt features a center medallion and 14 blocks, all set on point:

(Used with permission. Copyright Quilter’s Newsletter. Photo by Melissa Karlin Mahoney.)

Jennifer’s plan is to arrange her center medallion and surrounding blocks in a straight set, which means her quilt will be smaller than queen-size and will require 12 blocks instead of 14. Of course it makes sense to pick her favorite 12 of the 14 blocks. That’s why she skipped Block 10. If I’ve counted correctly, she has one more to make, and then it’s on to the borders. Onward, Jennifer!!