Lone Star Assembly Part 1

Sometimes quilts fly out of my machine, more often they crawl.  That was the thought that ran through my head this morning as I settled in to join the Lone Star Quilt-a-long.  My machine was feeling sleepy this morning so instead of waiting for it I got right to work.

There is simply no way my house is peaceful enough to get any paper piecing done on making more glows.  As a special treat (likely as much for you as it is for me) today I've decided I will start sewing half of the star together.  I have half of the background blocks finished and thereby I will start sewing, those. I am using my own Y-seam free method, though it is likely others have assembled a Lone Star Quilts this way before me.  To see my step by step tutorial you can find it here: http://sandandsunshine.blogspot.com/search/label/Y-Seam%20Free%20Lone%20Star%20Trick

I began as you see above by spreading out my Lone Star Diamonds with my Radiant Glow Blocks.  As you can see I'm really at a shortage on space for spreading out this beast, which makes working with them in two halves of a whole quilt more feasible. For space reasons I spread everything out counter clockwise, so when it came time to pin I again worked counter clockwise.  I feel like the way I have my diamonds laid out is really important to how well my star will look overall, so it was very important to me to ensure these diamonds stay in that order all the way through the process.  To help with this I sorted my pins by color, thanks to my sister for adding these to my collection just the other week, and then I wrote down the order and a note to myself that I am working counter clockwise.

 Time for me to start sewing!  Sue is our hostess today so why not pop of there and say hi?  She thinks she's behind me but her star is actually together, and I have some rather involved plans for my borders too.  Those of course will come later.