Some cook, I sew and write: creativity brings joy

Remember the Hunter's Star quilt? My parents loved it!  I was so grateful that my very first completed quilt was for them. While we were visiting, we did lots of other stuff too. I helped can apricot puree. Croquet. I began reading this book.  I highly recommend it and have started supplementing my diet with some amino acids. Fireworks and parade for the Mormon Pioneer parade. A photography lesson with a local photographer, Michael Scott Phillips: A trip to Tony Grove Lake (up Logan Canyon) with a detour to Bear Lake for gas! And then a 14+ hour trip home via Phoenix and Dallas.  Have you ever seen the Dallas airport at 2:30 in the morning?  It's empty. Now we're home again.  It was wonderful to visit family, but it is also good to be home.

What came? My Missouri Star BLOCK magazine!  Summer fun can begin although I probably won't be doing that much quilting.  We have travel plans coming quickly, my husband starts a new job, and then school starts too soon in August. :P  BUT this mag actually helped me put on the fun attitude so I don't get bogged down in details. Making it even better, it has directions for some of the quilts I've wanted to make like Stacks and floating hexagon quilts.  They also included a patriotic remake of the Friendship Star Sashing that got me excited to try. I really like how the magazine suggests different fabrics and combinations so I can start visualizing the quilt patterns from Jenny Doan's YouTube tutorials in different colors. Along with quilt patterns, Jenny tells stories to get me thinking of my life in terms of the high points instead of the shoulda, coulda, woulda slant.  I need that!!! Some of the patterns include the Dresden Botanica, a quilt ...

Oh dear.  It has been over a month since I've blogged!  I'm so sorry!  We've gone on vacation, I've finished the Hunter's Star quilt top, I've done some cross stitching, but I've blogged about none of it! One of the major things that has happened is this: It's not what is outside although the weed jungle is growing like mad with all the rain we have had.  My husband is taming it now that he has more time for yardwork.  He was laid off--did I mention that?  The picture also doesn't just show that my sewing machine table is a mess, but that's a major clue. I finished the Hunter's Star and programmed my machine to write a label for it, and then forgot to change the presser foot.  The needle came down, broke in the machine, seriously messed up the timing, and the machine began shredding thread. Even though I took my machine to the dealer's the next day (two weeks ago), the repairman attended training for at least a week so I still ...

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.

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 qu...