Did you know

Did you know that Robert E. Lee, general of the Confederate army, may well have been a savior of the Constitution of the United States?


Huh?!

You read that right.

Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia wasn't the first defeated.  In fact, it could have kept on going.  Other confederate commanders had been defeated but they hadn't ended the war.

Robert E. Lee was key.

Let's back up though.  Did Lee hate the Constitution?  No.  In fact, he was invited to become the commander over the Union forces.  Abraham Lincoln knew he needed Lee's military genius.  Lee actually was pro-Constitution.  There were a lot of factors at play in his life, however, and a primary virtue he valued was honor.  His family honor was ripped away from him because of his Revolutionary War hero father's post-war habits of gambling and drunkenness.

Robert E. Lee could not strip away his family's honor by leaving his homeland (Virginia) in her time of crisis.  But what he could do, he did. He ended the Civil War.  He fought a good fight.  He out-thought his opponents.  He out-maneuvered his opponents.  He proved his genius.  And then he moved on and urged his countrymen to follow him in that maneuver in becoming good Constitutionalists again.

It broke his heart to leave the Union, and it broke his heart to see so many good men that he loved killed.

He stood up and was counted.  He pled with Southerners everywhere to lay down their weapons of war because he knew they could and would continue guerrilla warfare ad infinitum.  Like Jesse James did.  He knew it was time for the country to heal.  Ironically, the Virginian, Robert E. Lee, stood with Abraham Lincoln in reuniting the country.  It ruined him financially and respectfully, but he did it anyway.  He stood on principle.

Where did I learn this?  From books.  Books help us remember principles.

It's time to stand for principles again. Remember what Robert E. Lee asked of his countrymen. Heal our country.  Stop the divisiveness.  Get rid of everything that doesn't matter, schedules that are overfull, driving habits that kill, online bullying that causes tremendous sadness.

It is time to heal each other.  People, not processes, are what matters.

Major milestone celebration!

April 18 saw my first Instagram picture of my Hunter's Star quilt so I guess that was close to when I began it.  I cut the layer cake into 4 squares as of that date.

Now I have the pieced part DONE!

And um, it feels like I've been working on this forever.  Can I hear Celebrate! now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M

The back isn't pretty, the 1/4" seams are far from perfect, the seams aren't always pressed to one side, and the seams didn't always nestle together because they had to go the same direction, but it's DONE and it actually looks pretty.

Miracles happen.  Every day.

Hunter's Star (long)

Oh my!  I thought I had posted more about my Hunter's Star Quilt that I am making.  The last post addressed that quilt, but that is the only post about it that I could find.  So sorry about that!  Here's a picture of the quilt on my design wall (from Fons and Porter--a little bit short but it will do better than the floor!)

Several months ago, I watched Jenny Doan's quilt tutorial about how to make the Hunter's Star quilt.  I fell in love with that quilt and bought the exact fabrics that she used.  What I didn't realize was that the Hunter's Star was a more advanced quilt block, even using her simplified instructions.   There are a few things I wish I had noted earlier:

1)  I needed one more charm pack of the print fabric in order to follow the same schematics as the tutorial.  There are far fewer purplish prints in either the charm pack or layer cake than any other color.  I actually raided my stash from the floating square quilt for one additional square because I ran short after buying the extra charm pack.

2)  The hunter's star is broken into four quadrants on her quilt, hence the need for more charms and unpicking.

3)  I wish I had ordered the Block magazine's Holiday 2015 issue because that's where the written directions are contained (I think.)

4)  I would highly recommend using only two colors for a first quilt, such as blue and white, red and white, batik and solid, a single print and solid, and so forth rather than a mixed print.  It wouldn't be so hard to coordinate.

4)  On another tangent, the Block magazine is fabulous reading!  I just received and devoured the spring 2016 issue.  Get the paper mag!!!  I know it's just another thing to store, but I'm finding I'm printing out a lot of pictures from the tutorials and Google searches.  The magazine is cheaper, I think.  Here's another quilt I want to make.  I love this green shade because it makes me think of my mother.  She loves this shade of green.  I may or may not have ordered the fabrics. :-) The 4-patch and strips quilt also drew my eye but I'm more inclined to pick my own fabrics for that so there's no rush.

Back to the Hunter's Star

The steps to creating the Hunter's Star quilt:

Make the half-square triangles for the 28 star blocks.  Hopefully your math will be better than mine!  Then you trim each of those down to 2 3/4 inch squares and trim off the tag ends.

Some of these are trimmed while others are waiting to be cut down.

All trimmed!

Next, lay them up into the star blocks.  The second time around, I put the colors in quadrants.  After unpicking seven whole scrappy-style stars.  

I HIGHLY recommend laying out each set of stars before sewing them together so you can be sure the prints play well together.  Then I found that the backs were easier to work with (and will probably be simpler to quilt) if I sewed each row together before attaching one row to another.  In the tutorial, Jenny sewed each quadrant together, but the bulky seams are atrocious doing it that way.  (Another unpicking session resulted for me when I realized that.)  I don't have pictures--I'm sorry!

For memories' sake: (I got lots of practice unpicking stitches!)

Note that there are two kinds of stars.  One moves to the right and the other to the left (12 and 16 of the respective blocks) so pay attention to the pattern: (Here's the sketches I mocked up.)

After that, piecing together 28 of the 4-patch blocks will seem easy peasy!  Take the white and print charms and sew them together--again according to the instructions.  You will rotate these on the quilt so the prints have to be in the top right and bottom left corners when you piece the blocks together.

And finally, we get to the final lay up on the design wall.

Seven blocks across and eight down.  The first row begins and end with star blocks from the stack of 16.  Orient the blocks according to the tutorial.  The second row uses the star blocks from the stack of 12 with the 4-patch blocks going the opposite direction from the ones in the first row.  I'm pretty sure I got that right.  Jenny kept talking about the orientation of the print, but I got lost there.  I'm a visual learner so pictures did the trick for me.

Last step is to sew all the blocks together before dealing with the borders and binding.  I'm toying with using the remaining charm squares by piecing them into a binding strip.