Stars+Alternates

Here's the whole stack of to-be-sewn together "twenty alternate blocks" for the Lupine Mystery quilt.And here's the final block assembled right after ironing.

Well, here they all are together, the Lupine Stars and the "alternate blocks". This us not an intentional arrangement, I just slapped them up as they were pressed.

woohoooooo.

Now to play around with the arrangement until I like what I see.

All The Stars

 

The last five Lupine Stars are now done.

Here's one of my favorites.

And another one.

Twenty-five Lupine Stars all together. This would make a nice quilt, I like that secondary pattern a lot.

I pushed myself and made five of the "alternate blocks", to add to the one I'd done before, just to see how it would change....And wow! What a difference that alternate block makes in the took of the quilt. Twenty more of those to assemble. This is going to be fun to play around with the final layout.

Ten More Lupine Stars

 

Ten more Lupine Stars are done and up on the wall.

They're hanging out with the first ten that I made and the one lonely "alternate" block.

Only five more to assemble!

Alternate Lupine Block

I had all the ingredients out, so I made one of the "alternate" blocks (ie not a Lupine Star) for the Lupine Mystery quilt. Just to see how one of them looked. I like it a lot, it's very different than the star block.

 Here's how it will look with all the Lupine Stars. It's a very cool secondary pattern. 

I even went through the Ohio Stars and the Kitty Ears and HSTs to match them up so that none of the fabrics are repeated in each block. And to make sure the colors and prints worked together in each block. It's quite a stack, isn't it?

Now they're all ready to sew once I'm done with the Lupine Stars which are also all laid out. Okay, back to all the block assembly sewing left to do.

Final Lupine Border

 The joined-up Flying Geese are now further joined together into the four final borders for the Lupine Mystery quilt. It took a lot of counting to make sure I had the correct number sewn together. 

I think it'll be a really nice-looking final border, especially once I make the four corner blocks. It's kind of funny to have the final border done before I've gotten the main part of the quilt put together.

Joined Geese

 

Sew Day was great yesterday, there was an excellent turnout, and many fun conversations. I also managed to get a lot of sewing done. 

I sewed together all of the many many Flying Geese units I had previously made for the Lupine Mystery. 

I also got to assist Kathy with sewing the embroidered labels that she makes for our guild to use for Community Giving quilts. I sewed these short seams in-between the block units.

I followed the great pressing instructions, half of the units pressed toward the pink goose, half towards the white goose.

And then I had quite a time (see the bottom row), trying to work out why the pressing didn't work out. Probably due to not reading the instructions well and also having conversations at the same time. Sigh. So, I got many of the sewn together pairs of geese sewn to another. These will make up the outer border of the quilt top, so. I have to join up the correct number of these units. Back to re-reading the instructions!

Community Quilt Binding

 

Just in time quilt binding for this Community Giving quilt (there on the right)  that I am turning in at Sew Day today.

First up stay stitching the quilt edge, then a trim of the excess batting and backing fabric.

Speaking of backing fabric, this selvedge made me go awwwww, Joann Fabrics RIP.. There was enough excess so that I was able to make most of the binding out of it along with some navy blue solid interspersed.

One of our members makes these amazing quilt labels on her embroidery machine to use on the Community Quilts.

There we go, ready to turn in.