Red, White, and Blue!

Red, White and Blue!  I was shoving fabric and books around last week trying to decide what to do on the annual guild retreat.  My class had been canceled and the coordinator said we were to work on our own projects.  Hmm...  I didn't have any started that I wanted to take on in public...  But, there were many exceptional quilters going to this retreat, which meant that I could get help and I needed to practice piecing (for those not acquainted with the terminology this word means matching all those points for which traditional quilts are well known).  Then I picked up Eleanor Burns book on Radiant Star quilts.  These quilts are a bit like piecing on steroids.  LOTS of points!  Her books have great instructions and I had been thinking of trying to do one for a while.  I needed a focus fabric for the "radiating" portion of the star.  My friend had given me a big piece of this American flag fabric and I put some other reds and blues from the stash with it.  The points and center are navy, the white in the star is the "white" background.  I took a flat white with me, but wasn't really happy with it and found this fabulous white fabric with overdyed grays and tans on it that was perfect.  The star is put together here (more or less flat and pretty well pieced), but all the background and border fabrics are just hung on the design board so I can see how it will look.  The star is 70" across so this will probably be a pretty big quilt.  I am thinking that this will be a long arm project too with the background quilted differently so that the star will really stand out.  Thanks to Carole and Pat for the help at the retreat. 

I know I have been particularly slow about blogging, it seemed like I just didn't have much left to say and wasn't doing enough to justify talking about it, but now that the holidays are over (and we had a particularly good time this year and made bags from recycled coffee bags, very fun!), and Don and Emily got fabric in Africa, I've made a couple cool baskets, made a couple really funky pillows, started a new guild exchange, am planning the African quilts, making a couple fun things for birthdays, taking a class for a new basket next month, doing some embroidery, working on the long-arm, planning to go to a wholesale quilt show in April, going to visit Kate in Florida in March...well, I guess I still have something left to say!