Lucky Stars

Guess what, quilters?  I've been sewing!

My good friend Marcia collected lots of fabrics from travels to France and Italy, back when her mother was still alive and an active quilter.  Marcia has now given me the bin of fabrics, and we went shopping last spring for background fabric to make the Lucky Stars quilt pattern by Atkinson Designs.  Then life intervened when my husband was diagnosed with cancer, and this project was put on the back burner.  It has rained the past few days, and I thought I would finally get started on this project for Marcia.

The fabrics are in cheerful primary colors with some greens and golds.  There are both Provincial prints and some fabrics that are solid or that read as solid.  There are also some other fabrics from her mother's stash that I think will blend well with this project.

The background fabric is a pale yellow cotton.  I wish we had chosen one that did not have a right and wrong side.  I have already had to unsew a few blocks because it is hard to tell the right side of the fabric.

After you sew the stars blocks, you trim them down to 9.5" square.  I have not done that yet, since my square ruler is in the mountains (I think...will have to look this weekend.)  

This is meant to be a Fat Quarter pattern.  You cut strips from each fat quarter, then subdivide to make both squares and rectangles.  The longer strips will form a sort of double sashing around each block.  I have not sewn the sashing strips yet, just placed them around the stars to get an idea how the top will look.

  

Now I have made about eleven stars.  To make a king size quilt calls for 122.  Yikes!  I guess I will get faster as I have more strips and pieces cut in advance.

I also painted two more maple leaves to go with the series I began earlier.  This time I traced around the actual leaves and built up the color more slowly.  I also scratched some veins into the wet paint with a craft knife.  I added a little bit of shadow around the leaves to give a little depth.

Getting there!