Seeing Stars Again

Haven't touched a sewing machine for over a week, and even the hand stitching has been minimal. Instead, I have been busy making soap and testing some new-to-me gluten free flours.

I have managed a bit more stitching on Stars in the Garden.

There are two more flowers cut out and ready to stitch.
Trying really hard on this project NOT to make the flowers and stars all matchy-matchy.  I am combining fabrics I would normally never combine, in an effort to make this look like a real "make-do" quilt. On one of the stars I even used one hexagon of a different print from all the others in that round. I had enough of the original print, but I wanted it to appear that I hadn't. Can you spot it? : )

 Last night I felt like I should be stitching, but couldn't bring myself to drag out a work in progress. Then I remembered Lisa Bongean's recent block for the Splendid Sampler. I am not doing the sampler, but I really liked this pretty little applique block. Lisa did not do hers in wool. I did--and I changed the colorway.

At only 7" square, it is a sweet little block. Here I am auditioning Valdani flosses, and the possibility of adding tiny black buttons to the flower centers. Jury is still out on that.

I discovered that many of the wools I had chosen matched quite well with Lisa's Floral Gatherings line. I may need to piece a border to go around it--when I feel like it.

It is stitching up very quickly. Lisa named it Dedication Rose.

Fun mail today from my sweet friend, Pam Buda. Look at these wonderful scraps from her recent red/white/blue line of fabric. Love this line! Do you think I need to make a few more r/w/b minis? : )

 Maybe this will inspire me to get stitching again. I don't ever seem to stall with this color scheme!

I'll end with this photo of a photo of one of my Mother's quilts. Somehow the original photo became torn in half, but you can still see the lines of the feathered wreaths and diagonal lines Mom hand quilted. It is difficult to tell that the 9-patch blocks are double 9-patches.

She made this in 1991. It won Sweepstakes at our county fair and our state fair, and went to Houston that year. Just the quilt went--wish I had, too.
Until next time,
Janet O.