More stars, garden walk.......

Three more stars.

A possible layout.  No big decisions at this point, just playing with possibilities.

The tiger lilies are late this year.  I hope I will have blooms next week.  We need rain badly and we are going into a 6 day stretch of over 90 degree days starting Saturday.  If the lilies only need heat I'll have flowers; if they need rain, maybe not.

I couldn't find one coneflower that didn't have holes in its petals.  I have seen a few Japanese Beetles so I don't know if they are responsible.

This dark coleus is so pretty.  The leaves look like suede.  The cute little baby bunny that I have been showing ate 2 plants out of my lowest pot on the steps.  I will have to replant because it looks pretty bare on one side.

I like the batik one better.......

I couldn't get a good photo of this top last night.  It really is a little more lively in real life but I am pretty disappointed in it.  I much prefer the shorter length pieces added in like I did on the batik one 2 days ago.  This one is made from 3" wide strips, all full length and it finished at 78" x 101".

This close view shows that there are some pretty prints in it.  The green that I used for spacers is brighter than it looks here.  I was surprised how they lined up in 4 staggered horizontal rows.  This will be an easy one to part with.

After I finished sewing this one I sewed together more batik short pieces that I found yesterday.  I grabbed a pile of red and deep pink full width strips to add to the short pieces to equal approximately 54 full strips.  It should finish out about 64" x 71".  I may add a few more pieces to it so it will be a little longer.

A good sewing day........

It was still hot and humid yesterday so I had a good inside day and sewed.  I did the 2 stars and more triangle squares at night but I worked on another of the Jelly Roll Race quilts earlier in the day.  Let me clear up that I would never make one out of a Jelly Roll; that is just the name that got tacked onto the procedure.  I prefer cutting strips from my own fabrics for my projects.  I also prefer a straight seam for the joining which resembles hardwood floor planks (like I did in the one I showed yesterday) rather than the diagonal seam suggested in the video. The one I worked on today is made of 73 three inch wide strips with a spacer block sewn between the 45" strips.  It is all floral fabrics and the spacer is green.  I sewed the spacers onto every strip, sewed the strips into one big long strip and then sewed the first seam.  That took 2 hours and 10 minutes.  Now I have 4 more seams to sew at the sew in today.  Hopefully I'll have a photo for you tomorrow.  It should finish at about 80" x 103".

So far I am just working with strips that I had cut previously that were stored in plastic boxes.  I have 2 empty boxes now.  I have many full boxes of strips of various types of fabric....

Getting some practice.....

The longarm quilters group that I belong to is going to have a sew day Wednesday doing the Jelly Roll Race.  I had 3 sets of strips that I thought would work so I decided to try one yesterday to see how long it takes.  Normally you would be using about 40 strips (which is how many are in a jelly roll) but I used a lot of short pieces that were left from a bunch of different projects and then added 17 full width strips to get to a desired size.  I had 133 pieces (from 8" -30" plus 17-45" strips) to sew together into one long strip which took about 2 hours.  This is equal to about 65 strips instead of the 40 in a jelly roll.  Then the rest of the sewing to make the top took 1.5 hours.  It is 62" x 86".  If you don't know what the Jelly Roll Race is you might want to type it into Search and then watch one of the videos on the Internet.  A friend of mine put spacers between her strips as shown here.

I made 2 more stars last night while watching the news and weather.  We had some severe storms in the area yesterday morning.  We finally got some rain but the severe part missed us.  It stayed cool all morning but then the sun came out and we were back up to 90 again.  Relief is coming tomorrow if the prediction is right.

At first I wasn't sure.......

After I sewed the border on I wasn't sure I liked it.  I thought maybe it was overpowering, but the longer I looked at it, the better I liked it.  It will have the red fabric for binding like I have simulated on the upper left corner.

I sewed a couple more stars.

Before I sewed the green one I played with alternate centers.  There may be a mix of different stars in this quilt, or I might just make my favorite, the lower right star to mix in.

Audition and playtime......

I tried lots of combinations of 3 strips for the border on this top and so far this is my favorite.

I like to have some kind of project that I can just pick up at times I can't figure out what else I want to do.  I will just keep making star blocks until I get tired of them and there should be enough for a quilt, or a row in a quilt.  I have the triangle squares laid out in groups of 8 that I need for each block.

3 more blocks....

I did more playing than sewing yesterday.  I made 3 more blocks for the QOV quilt that will be the sample for everyone to see.  I only have enough of this red and this blue for 8 blocks and there will be 20 blocks in the quilt.  That means that there will be several different blues for the pinwheels and that the red ones which are formed by the intersections of the blocks will be scrappy.  If you missed this when I first showed it and the book, go back to this post.