Lone Star Class

At Quilting in the Desert this week, I took "Lone Star Sparkler" taught by Helen Young Frost. (pictured here during her show and tell).

I showed up for class with a variety of fabric...

And chose these three for my first star:

Here are the pieces for the star points (mine on the left, a classmate's at the top is actually green with purple accent fabric, and my friend's earth tones on the right).

Jeanne and I at the end of the day! We both like to finish as much as possible in class, so we stayed in and sewed during lunch.

And my first stars! You can see I have a problem with the blue star, the red fabric is very rippled. Jeanne's solution is to rip it our and applique the star onto the background, but I think that A-word is nasty! I'm going to email the teacher and see what she suggests.

Since I had some extra time and fabric, I pieced an orange and green star, but it's just pinned to the background. I might try the background again, but I am nervous about screwing it up again! I thought I did a careful job measuring, cutting and pinning...wish me luck on the next attempt.

Sunny Day

This is why people suffer through 120 degrees in the summer...to enjoy 70 degrees in January.  I love living in Phoenix Arizona!  And I love my variegated rose bush, lovely pinks and yellows.  We had a few frosty evenings in December, so everything is looking a little ragged until the gardener (hubby) goes to work.
I was going to tease you even more with pictures of the luscious tangelos in another corner of our yard, but the battery in my camera died.  oops!  For anyone unfamiliar with tangelos, they are a citrus, I think a cross between oranges and tangerines, with fewer seeds.  Yummy!!

Sunday Sewing

While everyone was napping, I cut more 1.5 inch squares for my Centennial Postage Stamp quilt, and started work on the left half.

Here is what I have so far...I'm not liking the darker "stripe" between the star and the left-hand blue section, so there may be some ripping soon.  I knew that would be a possibility when I began sewing before I had all my fabrics laid out!  I tried to keep lights near the center, but I forgot that the whole section was the center of the quilt!

 

More quilting fun this week - I checked in today for Quilt Camp in the Desert. 

 

I can only take one day off from work, so I decided to take a Lone Star class with Helen Frost and meet up with my camp buddy Jeanne.  I hope these blue fabrics work...maybe the star will be a medallion for a future Quilt of Valor.

Fun Mail

I was a lucky winner AGAIN in the Block Lotto!  So, it will be a fun week or so as all my wonky trees arrive.  And, the UFO Challenge group promised to send each other fat quarters to celebrate finishing things, so those are the other fabrics, some nice blue and cream small prints.

Here are the trees that I mailed to one of the other winners:

The green one is supposed to look like Charlie Brown's sparse Christmas tree :-)

I have to share a cute Christmas memory...my daughter is obsessed with the "Gloria" song.  You may know it as Angels We Have Heard On High, with the chorus "Gloria, in excelsis deo."  We were singing it and she was saying "Chelsea Stable" for excelsis!  I love how that little mind works.  And then, since the subject of stables came up, she figured that the stable Jesus was born in was pretty dusty.  Probably!  She also wonders why angels don't have shoes, LOL.

New Year, New Project

My neighbor asked me to make her daughter a birthday quilt, so I planned a simple quilt in bright colors, made from 6 inch squares.  In this picture you can see the colored pattern, so I can keep track of my pieces without a design wall.  I am making a four-patch with two pink squares and one each of green and purple.  This will be a very scrappy quilt, since I cut 11 different pinks, 5 greens and 5 purples. 

 To get random blocks, I stacked the colors and mixed them as I chain-pieced.  The next step is to sew unique four patches together, then build 4x4s and 8x8s until I have the top finished.

 I saw this fabric on the sale rack and thought it was perfect for the backing:

It is a fun project to work on in these grey and unusually cold winter days in the desert!

The end is a new beginning

As I was at the sewing machine yesterday, I realized 2010 was a year of paper piecing for me!  I started with "Sparkling Jewels" a queen size quilt that I made as a wedding gift.  Completely pieced and quilted by me.  It took about six months.

 On New Year's Eve, I whipped up a little 6-inch-square sunflower from a kit I purchased at least a year ago.  It will make a nice gift for a friend at work since I wasn't organized with my Christmas cards before we left on vacation.

UFO Challenge Final Report

I officially finished 2 of my 5 projects for the Ravelry Quilters Fall Challenge...placemats and the bargello top.  Status of the others:  AZ Centennial is about a third done.  Top priority in 2011 since I want to enter it in a traveling show in June!

QOV -

 

 Quilted, needs binding, label and presentation pillow case.  I did finish the binding on a different QOV, so if I put the two together, I could mentally give myself a third "finish," but they aren't really done until they're in the mail, so QOV carries over to the new year.

Block of the month - the center is done!

I have the fabric cut and ready for the borders, so this will be a quick finish to flimsy stage.  I am envisioning feathered wreaths in the green squares, and lots of stitch-in-the-ditch in the star blocks.  Sashing, probably a simple meander variation.













There are many different groups focused on UFOs, and I did make a list of about 15 projects that are in various stages of completion.  Ultimately, I decided not to join any of the "completion contests."  As I said earlier, the AZ Centennial quilt needs to be my focus, and I promised a friend a quilt in January.  Then there are the knitting projects I want to work on...plenty of fodder for future posts!