Lima Beans Update

Lima Beans? Update?? I know, the beginning of this project was buried in another post, so it is unlikely anyone remembers it. But, it has been coming along this week:

This is the first of four seed packet patterns from June Grigg that I bought in the early 90s and am finally getting around to.  The stitching is on 18 ct aida, and the texture and coverage are really nice.  I remember now that the texture is what attracted me to the projects in the first place, when I saw the samples in June's booth so long ago. I wish you could all feel it through your screens!

Other than some cross stitch and a few more stars, I've mainly been waffling about some design ideas this past week.  I've been over to Fabricland three days in a row now.  Yesterday I had finished my shopping and was driving out the driveway, when I had another idea and turned around to go back again! Most of my plans have been for the RVQG BOM, but today I cracked and bought some Christmas fabric too.  It's hard to say no to $5 per metre! And we need new Christmas placemats...

Filler Diamonds for Texas Star

This is pretty much all I have been working on this week. Today I have forced myself to take a break to give my hands a rest! Earlier in the week I cut some more fabric for the project, including these stripes, and the white filler diamonds.

I wanted to start putting in the white diamonds now, so I am not stuck with them all at the end. Now that I have done some of them, I am doubly glad of this plan, because the diamonds are somewhat more challenging.  The points are heavier to baste, and the white fabric is heavier too.  That's why there are holes in my finger that have to heal! But if I just add three diamonds to each star for now, I can arrange them as I like at the end:

I will have to leave a few without the diamonds to finish off the top and right edges.

I have also decided to make the whole quilt bigger. My original plan was to make it about 60" square, but recently I have found myself preferring rectangular quilts, so I am going to bump it up to 60" x 80". With a 4" border, that will require 315 stars. I find that 3 lengthwise strips from a fat quarter give me 4 to 5 stars, so I am going to shoot for about 70 fabrics total. That should be plenty of variety!

I have realized that this is probably not going to be a very blog-friendly project, because I think you can only look at so many stars, but I will try to show a few of the more fun fabrics that I have for this quilt.  The only fussy cutting I am going to do is for the stripes, so it is only here and there that a complete motif shows:

Fortunately, a little bit of mystery about how exactly each star will look keeps it interesting!