Twenty stars

This is all twenty paper pieced stars. Done! Except for fixing a couple of mistakes that are easily fixable. They will have stripping between them so they won't be so on top of each other as they are here pinned to my design wall. This part was exciting and challenging. Putting them together and quilting is boring but I'll do it slowly, bit by bit. These will not reappear in this blog for quite a few months.
I have another quilt in my head that excites me as much as the stars do so I may sew that entire top before I start quilting this. We'll see how disciplined I feel like being.

The book here provided all the star patterns. As you can see at a glance I did not follow Carol Doak's color schemes -- except there is one -- on the lower right of the book that has a near equivalent in the quilt. I feel I have learned by trial and error, changing my mind after making color choices, somethings throwing out the first couple of sections when I saw how they looked. But I feel rewarded and even excited. Sometimes I just turn on the light in the sewing room [studio?], stand in the door way so I have perspective and study these stars from a distance. Then I go up closer and look at the various fabrics I've used - some fabrics repeatedly, others only once or twice.

This was a real stash celebration. I used only stash fabrics. When I bought the background fabric, which is a deep purple with a deep olive green floral design, I knew I would use it for the background for something colorful. That was all I knew at the time. I wish there were enough to do all the stripping between stars but there isn't. I'll find something else.

More stars

I'm on a roll with these paper pieced mariner's stars designed by Carol Doak. This is twelve, I'm planning definitely sixteen and, if I have enough of the background fabric, I will go for 20. There are 24 designs in Carol's book, Mariner's Stars. The blocks are 8x8. I think I want stripping of the background fabric between -- there's the problem. This was an end-of-roll fabric a number of months ago when it was on sale. I don't think I can get more and I won't go to the trouble of a complex search. So what I can do with the blocks is limited.

But isn't that in keeping with what quilting was traditionally about? Earlier quilters used what they had and if they ran out they had to make do or find a substitute. I am more of that mindset than the modern one that says we should have exactly what we want at all times. That has never been the way of my life -- in any respect -- and I don't expect it ever will be. I don't feel cheated or irritated that that's the case. I suppose that attitude is somewhat unAmerican today. But my parents were depression era people who passed on the "make do" attitude to me. I can see no reason to change that attitude.

Two more stars and two to go

Moving right along -- I need a total of ten paper pieced stars. I've got eight done although I'm not sure if I showed them all. These are the two most recent, one of which replaces the one I showed a couple days ago that was visually muddled. I'll get another done tomorrow. I've got to wah and iron the a blue and white print that will make up borders and four largish triangles. I'm curious how it will all work in the mlarger design -- I'll show the pattern I'm aiming for tomorrow I think.

It was a disappointing day -- bright sun had been promised. It was sunny until about 10:30 and then turned cloudy ... nothing fell out of the sky, happily. In fact we had no snow in January at all -- which hasn't happened in 75 years of record keeping. But today was Groundhog Day and the fat little beast was tugged out of his cozy den early while the sun was shining -- meaning he saw his shadow which means, so they say, six more weeks of winter Well ... more of the same is fine, I guess. But this is a silly tradition, mainly a media event, a break from the continuous political jabber and the emphasis on Britany's psychoss. Yawn to all of it.

I'm seeing stars

This picture looks two-tone because there was actually ten minutes of sunlight but with sunlight comes shadow. I have 10 minutes of 8 inches of sun -- these squares are 12 inches so ...

I was so knocked out by my fights with the stars yesterday I soothed myself in the early-ish evening with a long, lovely soak in the tub. Then sat down to start a new ]to me] book by Mary Lee Settle, a very favorite author; but I was so exhausted my eyes kept closing and I barely got through three pages before I gave up utterly and settled happily beneath the quilt currently on my bed and was sound asleep somewhat before 10:00.

However, I was awake before 5:00 and really feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed after coffee at 5:15 so I washed my dishes and my face and attacked the star I left half done. Too hastily. The quarter of it I made was mirror image of what it should be -- I don't know how I managed that! I said a few choice words a lady of my vintage isn't supposd to know, chucked the whole thing because I then decided the colors weren't as balanced as they should be. When I was about to start the second quarter of the new version the phone rang. Someone else trying to convince me I need a new credit card so I can single handedly perk up the sadly failing American econony, thought I. But no, at last it was the office manager telling me to come in to work. Hurray! Respite!

When I got home I returned to the unfinished star and polished it off handily before dinner. I decided that the lower of the two stars in yesterday's photos will have to be remade -- it IS much easier to make the second than the first. The two prints in the middle of that one bleed, visually, into each other too much. I'll use a plain-ish lighter fabric in the middle. That will be tomorrow's assignment. Then I'll have a total of six finished and only three more to go. The remainder of the quilt will be a snap -- truely! I'll show a pix in a day or two.