Giveaway! and can this quilt be saved?

 So I'm making this quilt for my sister.  It's supposed to look like this excellent quilt... but I realized I don't have a good color sense.  (My mother's been telling me that for years, and the husband has even very delicately started in... hers is "are you going to go outside wearing that with that?" and his is a diffident "do you normally wear those two things together?")  Looking at it now, I see I should have made the stars out of the colored flower bits that make the stretched hexagons.  There are stars there, just you can barely make them out.

(This is the backing, with a red binding.)

So, does anyone have any hints for how to quilt it (at home - I don't do the "send it to someone else and have their computer quilt it" thing, although I do understand it's faster) so that the stars are emphasized rather than the oblong shapes?  Colors, techniques, anything?  Would using a thick/fluffy polyester batting (rather than thin bamboo/cotton) and putting most of the quilting in the non-star areas help?

(Redoing it is not an option - I don't have any more fabric!)

But now on to what you want... the giveaway!

Whether or not you're willing/able to give me "can this quilt be saved" advice, I have up for offer 2 yards of silk chiffon from Universal Fabrics here in Houston.  I bought it because it's fabulous, but I've got no idea of what to do with it, so I'm leaving it up to you. 

Here's a shot on a chair back so you get the scale:

And a close-up of the hilarious pattern, also showing how sheer it is (it's folded up behind itself at the bottom of the photo):

(I saw a greetings card once with various structured undergarments on it; the inside said, "thanks for your support!")

To win, just post a comment of any kind.  Quilting advice welcome, but not necessary.  A way to contact you (i.e. no "no-reply" profiles) is necessary, of course.

(Random) Drawing on May 26th.

Shipping note: I had some issues last time with the giveaway - I live next door to a post office, but it's open only when I'm at work, so I have to wait for a day off work when the post office is open (i.e. no holidays) to ship internationally (the machine will ship domestically any time).  I had a day free just after the giveaway, but a family emergency kept me from the post office on that one day, and it was over a month until I had a non-holiday weekday off work again.  So, this time, US/Canada only, unless you're willing to wait a while for shipping.  (If you're willing to wait, you can submit from anywhere!)

No internet

My internet's out again -- 5th day out in the past 10 days.  Perhaps it's time to switch providers?  Anyhow -- back when it's fixed.

Non-maternity maternity top

Below I mention my non-maternity maternity top. Here, as promised, are pictures:



As you can see, I haven't added the ruffles or fully attached the straps.

Or properly cleaned my bathroom mirror, it would seem... looks fine without the flash, though!

Honestly, I'm not quite as large as the top makes me look...

Non-pregnant maternity top

So, you know when you see a cute pattern, and you make it up, and it's not quite what you expected?

I'm not pregnant, and not going to be for quite some time, but soon I'll post pictures of my unintentional maternity top (cuteish, though, so may as well keep it for the future!)...

Soap!

I've been enjoying myself with some melt-and-pour soap. The first batch was very pretty, but cheap base, so didn't lather well -- smells divine, though, and very decorative. Good ornamental soap.

The next batch I had more fun -- rose petal bits, almond bits, olive oil, honey (that one was slimy, won't try that again!), and a better base.

Also tried a bit of rebatching, as you can see in the bright aqua ones -- they're a bit rubbery, but maybe they'll work!

Verdict: Soapmaking is fun, but when will I use all that soap? And who can I give it to?

Now, that's just tacky

My mother made an out-of-town family member a hat and scarf for Christmas last year. She was so proud of herself -- she'd just progressed beyond shawls, and these did not look like the work of a beginner.

This year, said family member brought my mother a bag of giveaway stuff he'd found in the closet he uses whenever he visits (and that no one else uses), for her to take to charity.

In the bag? The hat and scarf. He'd never even taken them away.

Well, someone's never getting time spent on him again, as he's shown how little it means to him.

First limp leather attempt

This was something I made a month or two ago (along with several small casebound leather books, which worked quite well at that small scale and made me very happy indeed). There were so many problems with it. To begin with, my needle was too big, I believe (I now have smaller needles), and the holes I had made for chain stitch at the ends of the signatures ended up turning into slits (and, in case you didn't realize it, a chain stitch doesn't hang on to a slit very well). That, coupled with my lack of knowledge of exactly what order to do things in, ended up in my getting very lost on the inside and the whole bottom right corner of the text block spine not being attached to the cover at all:

(You can also see that I didn't get the signatures lined up well with each other either -- something went wrong when punching the holes.)

The way the spine finally ended up turning out was even wonkier than the rest:



But at least it worked as a book -- it's got text from Project Gutenberg and is not structurally difficult at all to read. So, not a complete failure after all.