Switching gears

Since I need to wait for a small fabric shipment from my mom to proceed with the March button up, I am moving back to the QOV stuff. When I last worked on this (Friday 2-17) at the Friendship Quilters sew-in, this was as far as I got. Jane gave me the blue yardage for that last round or it would not gotten THAT far.

Currently it measures 36 x 56 and it needs to be bumped up to as near to 60 x 90 to meet the requested size for the veteran's home beds. Translation: 17 inches more to the top and bottom and 12 inches to the long sides. I have it worked out on paper in EQ---see THIS post for the sketch.

The Marcus Brother fabric site has the pattern designed to use their American Valor fabric line. They show a version of variable star scattered between pieces of triple rail using a partial seam method. I don't think that is going to work for me since mine is a bit asymmetrical. I thought maybe Friendship Stars instead?? Name of the quilt group, after all but only a quilter would recognize the block name and make the connection between the two.

Jackie had cut these stars away from that same panel piece to just use the eagle part in her top.  I  happened to be standing at the cutting table at the time and thought these might work on my panel quilt.  Only thing is, there is now way to cut the blocks out evenly.  I decided to fuse them down to a base fabric and it will eliminate having to piece any sort of star for the quilt and get more mileage from Jackie's panel at the same time.

J

One good thing from my treasure hunt yesterday was that I found some fabric I can use for the outer border and probably the star bases. It will still have to be pieced for the long edges but it is 44 wide x 64 inch long cream colored stuff that will also work for the radiant stars. Another dinosaur, it was with a half done Debbie Mumm cow project that I never got around to pitching or re-purposing. It might make a cute center for a kids quilt so I still didn't pitch it but I did run off with the remaining background fabric. When I could not get the ingrained how long folds to press out, I just threw it in the washer. I also located that navy with the tannish paisley that might work for the binding. I'll get to cutting as soon as I finish my blog post. 

------

Tomorrow is Bama Belles day with a potluck lunch. I took time this morning to make a double batch of Italian Wedding Soup for my contribution. I also did some prep work for our supper meal since we are having Turkey Cobb Salads. I will just have some plating to do when its time for supper and not have to drop whatever I am in the middle of come 4:30-5 p.m..

We are STILL waiting for the replacement dishwasher. It arrived at the store on Wednesday but so far no one has called to set up a time to install it. We do like the frigidaire model and seem to be getting used to it but do not like the scratch and banged up kick plate. Both of us have our fingers crossed that the washing machine won't be next to crash. We have had to have the dryer serviced but not the machine once we got passed the initial improperly installed hoses, that is.

The temps have been in the 50's and 60's so DJ is busy caulking and touch-up painting. That siding is constantly in need of attention, it seems. I am still not ready to concede DJ's point that we are having an early spring. March can be such a changeling, after all. Next he will be saying that we didn't have any spring and went straight to summer-----like that old saw that "Alabama has the following seasons: almost summer, summer, still summer and Christmas"

Well, I can either talk about quilting or I can actually do it------till next time.