A Ray of Spring: Mozzarella Caprese

I haven't spent much time on the Lone Star Quilt.  Though I am nearly done with the 5th blade.  Instead today I wanted to show you my little slice of heaven.  The week before Thanksgiving I discovered that while I knew my sage plant had died earlier in the summer, I did not replace it, truthfully I simply forgot.  No sage plant means no sage butter rubbed all over and in my husband's turkey.  Do you know how hard it is to find a sage plant right before Thanksgiving?  I called my local grocery store, two different home improvement stores who couldn't help me, before spending half an hour on the phone with the nicest man at a different my home improvement store who told me to call Walmart, you get the point

Of course after all that my husband finds Sage plants at Walmart.  Yes, I could have purchased cut sage but for $1 more you can have a live plant to have for next time. Of course being the man he is, he doesn't just bring home the sage plants.  He also brings home a tomato plant.  I spent 4 years in Arkansas, I know all about tomato plants.  They have an oil in their leaves which makes them stink all the time.  No one else seems to know what I'm talking about but I do not like the way the tomato plants smell.  I looked upon his new found winter hobby with distain.

Now I know, I was wrong and I'm glad I just left him alone with his little plant.  Because when he picked a fresh tomato off the stem the other day he found another fresh and ripe one behind it, and one above it too.  Oh how I love winter indoor container gardening!  No weeds and amazingly summer fresh ripe and juicy tomatoes.  If that wasn't enough DH brought home buffalo mozzarella cheese and fresh basil (yes it was the packaged kind, I don't have much luck keep Basil alive for more than a season or three - feel free to leave your tips so I can kill another plant).
I know food is hard to photograph to make it look good, but with something this fresh and wonderful I just had to try.  What do you think of my Mozzarella Caprese?  One thing I will tell you.  We ate it all gone!

Half a Lone Star

Half of a Lone Star

Is half a Lone Star a really Lonely Star?  Honestly, I don't see how it could be as I've been working at sewing my strips together steadily.  So here we are at the halfway point of my Lone Star.  As I will likely be creating a secondary design on my background fabrics; half way is a bit misleading, but I'm going to take it and enjoy it.  Look half my star!!!

At this point I am loving the way the brown and teal fabric is running around as the final "circle".  What do you think?  Anything you're liking?

Now for my confession as a serial blogger, I'd like to announce I have created over 700 posts since I started blogging in 2008.  Therefore, I am on my last 6 MG of free blogger space.  When I mentioned it to DH he miss understood at first.  Yes, I said 6 mere megabytes.  I remember when a kb would get you an email, but those days are gone.  I explained that I can have 20 GB of additional space for $5 a year.  For me that means my little hobby will suddenly be costing me money, abet not much but all the same...  DH thought it was no big deal and said I should have told him sooner (aka before I deleted my two test sites to go from 3 MG avail, to 6 MG).  Do you have any thoughts?  Have you maxed out your available free space?  Have you given it any thought?

Lone Star Diamond Progress

I now have two of the diamonds for my Lone Star Quilt completely pieced.  Each diamond will make up one section of my eight point star.  This is a big accomplishment as getting each strip just right is rather tricky.  I did the math and if I was piecing each little diamond to make this quilt it would take 512 pieces.  Using this method it will still have that many diamonds but at least it wont feel like it.  My two completed pieces are made up of 128 diamonds.  How about that for little details?

Two diamonds down, six to go.

Lone Star Quilt: All Strips Cut

Lone Star Strip Sets All Cut

Today I finished cutting all of my Lone Star Strip Sets.  Don't they look nice laid out like this?  The next step in the directions is to mark off 1/4" and use standing pins to ensure the seams butt together properly.  The thought of that will need to simmer in my mind a little because it sounds tricky.  The directions actually say that I should sew it with a large stitch length, check it and if everything looks good re-sew it with a tighter stitch length.  That sounds like solid advice.
As for getting everything lined up though, I'm not sure about that so I picked up some of this.  Has anyone ever used it before?  It's 1/4" Quilter's Tape.  I was looking for Tiger Tape that I hear about talked about on quilting shows, but this is what my local store had.  I think it will work out just fine.

Quilters Tape for Marking 1/4" seam allowance offsets

*** January 11th Update:  Don't use the 1/4" quilters tape on this project.  It's bad!  Why?  Well you see you put the tape on one strip, and then mark your diamond joints with standing pins and sew.  But the tape does something.  It holds the diamonds so they can not stretch, not even a little bit.  Why is this bad?  Because the second strip the one you are sewing to, will stretch!  Even with the most gentle handling the fabric without the tape will stretch a little bit and then everything goes bad.  If you forego the tape; as you handle the two strips pinning them together and lining up they do stretch a little bit, but that's okay because they stretch and move together.  I suppose you could tape both strips but that seems like a waste of tape and the directions on my package were very clear not to stitch through the tape which could happen accidently if you had it on both strips.  I am glad to have the tape as I've wanted it for a while and will just save it for other projects.  Not this one.

Evening Time: Slumber Party

Sunny Sleeping

I didn't sew at all today.  Though I did get another strip set cut.  Five down three to go.  Everyone here wants to call it a night and I thought I'd share what that looks like.  Any wonder why I said a Sunny moment might happen to my bias edges?

Tiny watching from nearby

Just look at them on my uncut strips.  This is where I found both of them after popping into the sewing room after dinner.  I sound unhappy about it but the truth is they are welcome.  I haven't seen both cats in the sewing room together in quite a while.