Star quilt top

I've never done a .5" border like the orange one before, and was worried that it would look all wavery, but it actually turned out fine! Finished size will be around 60" square (thus, lap quilt or quite a generous baby quilt).

Now I have to deal with the quilting machine to finish up.

Click for a larger view:

Friendship star progress

I haven't been in the studio to work on quilts recently, but I do have this on the floor waiting for me when I'm ready.



It's what I have so far for the National Stillbirth Society quilt, and yes, it looks pretty different from the way it looked in the mockup. Playing around with it on my Electric Quilt program, I found that the logs and squares construction for the alternating blocks conflicted with what I wanted to do with the colors. So I ended up alternating stars and ninepatch blocks instead.

Becca also has a group of the stars we made and is working on one for another group using the logs and squares as alternating blocks. She also ended up with the gold star that you saw in the previous post. I put a different orange in my star, to play off the purple fabrics I was using.

Updated stars

Here is our updated quilt diagram:



And a photo of some stars lying on fabric that will be incorporated into the non-star squares:

Star quilt, Makindu, consulting

Progress continues on the star quilt. I have 6 of the large stars completed, and have procured additional white-on-white fabric to make more. (We want to have some stars spinning clockwise and others spinning counterclockwise, so I thought I would make four of each: this guarantees we'll have enough for each direction, no matter whether Becca makes "lefties" or "righties".)

I should give credit where credit is due. Part of what inspired us to make a raffle quilt for an organization that is personally meaningful to us is the fact that my mother and several of her friends are nearing the homestretch on a raffle quilt for Makindu Children's Program. (This is an organization that provides healthcare, education, and support to children orphaned in Africa.) I have seen photos of their quilt in progress, and it's pretty impressive. I hope to be able to show you pictures when they have the top finished, and will also share a link to the raffle if Makindu puts it up online.

In other quilt-related news, I am helping another online friend plan out her first quilt. (I imagine she may in part be referring back to the instructions I wrote up for Becca last year, which I will be modifying for inclusion in this blog once we get started working on the Good Wishes quilt.) She will probably post about her quilt project on our bulletin board when she gets started (this summer). It sounds like it will be very like one of the Good Wishes quilts in certain respects - but since this is her project and not mine, I'll leave it to her to talk about the specifics.

Friendship stars

What, me, only work on one project at a time? Never!

Last year I taught my friend Rebecca how to quilt over the computer (using lots of words and lots of pictures). We didn’t know how well it would work, but she did a great job - she was very focused and stuck with the task all the way through, and her quilt looked really great when she was finished.

Well, last night we were talking on the computer and we decided that it would be fun to try to make another quilt together - but this time, we'd be working on the same quilt instead of on parallel ones.

I usually make my charity quilts for Project Linus, but this time we thought we would contact a charity near and dear to Becca's heart, the National Stillbirth Society, to see if they would be interested in doing a raffle. Becca says that some of the parents like to imagine their babies as being stars (like in Greek mythology) so she thought we could make a quilt with stars on it. She picked white-on-white stars on a scrappy blue background.

These are two sample stars I made:


And here is the layout we are working on. (She's put together a neat idea for the last two rows, using 6" stars instead of 9" stars, but I haven't diagrammed that part yet):



We haven't talked about what happens after we put the stars together... but I guess we'll see when we get there :)