Lone Star Border Thoughts

Here is the beginning stages of my planning for the border of my Lone Star.  I saw this really amazing Lone Star Quilt, which you can see here, it was made and quilted by Jennifer McRae whose website you can visit here (though she doesn't have any pictures of it on her site).  The details, both in the border and in the quilting are really remarkable.  The more you scroll down, the more images there are of the amazing details.  If you're wondering about your Lone Star, or just want to feel like oh my goodness now what, check that one out.

EQ5 does not have a lonestar block, at least not one that I can find, so rather than let that deter me, I took pencil in hand.  As you can see the leftover trapeziods will surround the quilt, and then from there I'm not sure.  I think I'd like to do something in the corners...  Maybe more paper pieced blocks with the rays flaring in towards the center of the quilt (the reverse of the ones shooting out of the star).  When I look at the quilt as it is now, there is a pale blue that speaks to me.  You can see what I'm talking about here. I'd like to do seomthing with that and I'm thinking I'd like to move away from the white, allowing it to be contained within the center focus.  So maybe brown or black for the background to really light the center fire?  Or perhaps the other way around with the blue as the background and the details in black? 

Anything jumping into your mind for those big open corners?  The border is about 16" from trapeziods to the edge of the quilt. 

Lone Star Assembly Part 2

Half of Lone Star Flimsy

I have joined half of the Lone Star Quilt!  The pictures were almost better before I sewed them together but I wanted to show it off anyway.  Often when these Lone Stars have rays bursting off they seem to be called Bethlehem Stars.  Clearly the reasoning is obvious.

Below is a picture of my little helper.  When I was pinning she thought it was the best game ever, which I was glad she'd never done that before!  Also she was so eager for this blog post that she jumped from where she was resting to play underneath before I even had this half of a flimsy spread out.  I think it's earning four paws up!

Can you see the birthmark on Tiny's bottom lip?  Both of my kitties have that and both have rings on their tails.  They are both darlings, but what with these pictures I post of Tiny you'd never guess it would you?  I think of Tiny as a man's cat.  She doesn't care about visitors one way or the other, though she will happily find any woman with or without hair product in and make friends.  Gals it's the hair it's not you.  Not to mention she is a real sweetie at bed time happy to cuddle up for pets before leaving you for her own bed.

My Helper

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.

Glow Arcs Become Radiant Blocks

Today I sewed the curves onto the first four glow arcs that I showed you yesterday.  Just for fun I put them together in this circle for the picture.  What a switch hu?

Don't forget tomorrow is the Lone Star Quilt-along-Group.  Our Hostess is Sue and as she will likely have far more peace and quiet around her house than I will have here.  I'm certainly looking forward to the day.

4 Glow Arcs for Lone Star

4 Radiant Glows for Lone Star Quilt

My Lone Star isn't feeling lonely with the four Radiantly Glowing Arcs that I have completed.  Now that's halfway!  The going seemed really slow there for a while, but I've figured out a trick, pinning from the "pretty side" and double check alignment, instead of what all my research said.  Pinning from the pretty side some how allows to me to have a much better idea of where my fabric is and how it will lay, resulting in much less un-sewing on my last block.

This Saturday is our Lone Star Support Group Quilt-a-long and I'm looking forward to being able to say "I made progress this month".  DH will need to trace more of these extra large paper piecing patterns for me before I can continue, therefore my plan is to get to work sewing the arcs on these.  Then I'll be able to say I'm halfway done with this part.  Can you tell I will be thrilled when I can say that??

What have you been working on?  Anything not related to paper piecing I'm happy to hear about.  Oh unless you want to tell me you also have had issues with paper piecing, then you too can leave a comment.