The Trouble with Reprints

This is the first Saturday of the month and that means it's Lone Star Support Group Quilt-a-long Day.  Yippie!  Well, not so much.  My friend Vicki mentioned it at the beginning of the week and I thought good DH is home on some well earned vacation time, he can trace those glow patterns and I'll have something to show for my month.  But we've been busy.  I've tried to make something fun happen each day this week, and along with the Honey Do request list we've been covered up.

• We've gotten a new bed.  It is beautiful, a Mahogany poster with short posters that are only about 5' at the headboard and about 4.5' at the food board.
• Right now DH is installing a remotely recorded security system.  So the next time someone tries to steal from us we will have a nice recorded image of them.  
• DD and I have been doing craft projects.  I am not a crafter.  Not everything has turned out as nice as the pictures.  Many people think quilting and crafting go hand in hand and that if you can visualize a beautiful quilt you must be good with glue and what not.  That's not me.  I don't like the mess of crafting and I find it often costs more than you expect and you end up with something that you have to keep forever because you made it and in my tiny house...  Right.
• In addition DD and I have been baking, at the beginning of this week we made Oatmeal, chocolate chip, Almond cookies.  As in one cookie with all those things in it.  They were surprisingly very good and I only have one left.  Today we're making our traditional family Easter Nest with Hawaiian Bread and coconut.  It's an old tradition for my family, but as DH doesn't like coconut I haven't made it in the past 10 years.  No time like right now to renew old favorites.

But enough of all that Today is Lone Star Day.  I have not sewn a single thing on this project.  BUT!!!!  I have picked apart a portion of my first glow, and I spent a great deal of time thinking about the Lone Star Quilt.  Why?  Maybe you remember I didn't buy enough fabric of the white on white and that I'd be going back to the store to buy more?  They were all sold out.  I tried twice.  Finally I sent my DH with the numbers from the one I was certain was the one and sent him with a swatch.  He told me the numbers matched and brought home a fabric that was close.  Even the weave and texture was right.  But the print wasn't quite as pretty, at least not to me.

Then I started thinking.  This was a matter of buying more fabric that I liked less (btw plan for 6 yards if your making the glows) and starting from the beginning.  Or perhaps having the corner glows with the first white on white background fabric and the other four, the ones on point having the second white on white fabric.  I liked that idea, but I was afraid because of the way I'd cut the first fabric I would get to the last block and not have enough.

Thinking is good, I recommend it.  As a week past it started to come to me.  The fabrics are very close, the difference is the paisley is about half the size in the second printing as it was in the first.  My master plan is that the fabric that I love the first fabric will make up the two arcs in the glow blocks.  I know I have enough because I cut all eight of those first.  Then the fabric between the mauve rays will be small bits and for that I will use the smaller print.  This way I get the most of what I really wanted.

Now instead of having one glow done I have none done.  But that's okay.  I'd rather love, love, love this quilt than hate that I under estimated yardage on a quilt I wanted to make and make well so badly.

That's where I'm at, how about you?  I've love to hear what you've been up to on your own Lone Star Quilt this month and for anyone watching it's not to late to join us.  Sue complied free patterns along with the one I'm using here and for those that would rather have a book here is the list of books she came up with and who is recommending which ones.  I made a tutorial just for this Group on How to Avoid Y-Seams in your Lone Star Quilts which you can read here.  Oh yes and here is tutorial I made last month for scaling up your background blocks if you decide to put glows in behind your star.