Saturday's progress...

I couldn't resist assembling two more Jazz Stars.

 This is the first star in the Bella Verona BOM, I am ready to pick up my next block on Saturday Feb. 18th. After doing this block it reminded me of the Tonga BOM that is waiting to be finished...Since I can't run the long arm during the Supper Bowl Game, Maybe I will be able to get the Tonga quilt top assembled.

February's Jazz star...

I was able to assemble the next star. It goes much faster with the parts already cut out.

Wednesday's progress....

Not any sewing today. I had appointments to keep and I went to see the movie Descendants. All I got done tonight was the cutting out of six stars. If I make twelve then I only have to cut out five more. I plan to finish sewing these blocks before I cut any more out. I think I need to see what colors I am missing.

New projects started in January 2012

I joined a fun group at Cat Patches called NewFO. We report once a month all the new projects that we have started and are put in a drawing for a prize. No pressure to have something done, just the fun of sharing what we are working on.

At the beginning of the Jan. I started a new BOM.

I played with my lil twister ruler and started this little wall hanging.

 And last but not least I started this challenging quilt from the Material obsession 2 book, "Jazz Hand"

Just another fun month at Eclectic Quilter's House.

Ready for a new project...

I got a copy of this book earlier this month and found an interesting quilt that I wanted to make.

 I fell in love with this star. I also fell in love with the cover quilt, but I don't have any taupe fabric for the background. For this quilt I have a collection of Kaffe Facet and other brights that I was going to use for an applique flower project. Since my heart is not really into doing applique, I decided to do this pieced star. 

  This is the other version of the star quilt from the book. I like both and can make the stars before deciding how to set them.

Here's the fabric and the bottom polka dot will be the background.

This is the layout for the Jazz Hand Star. I'm sure that you think I'm crazy about now, since it has 72 kite shaped pieces in each block. The book showed a plastic template, that was available from Australia. So I got to searching on the internet to find one closer to home.

Eureka! I found a suitable one at Baycreek Quilting Templates

It is slightly smaller, but close enough for me. I wonder if there are any other crazy quilters who would like to make these stars? I am going to try one, I'll let you know how it goes. 

 I finished one block. It takes a lot of fussy sewing, but the template makes assembly easier, since all the pieces are consistent. The Y seams kind of remind me of paper piecing. My sewing machine has a built-in knot tack and thread cutter, which help to make the construction more efficient and less messy. The hardest part was choosing the colors and cutting all the kites. I think that I will try to make at least one block a month.

Orca Bay Top is finished....

I finished adding the borders to my Orca Bay Mystery quilt. I like blue so I changed the inner border from white to blue and then added another wide blue border.

 Here's a close up of the borders.

And of course the Inspectors did their job right before I took the quilt top to remove the paper from the string blocks. This coming week I will be quilting.