Joining a Few Texas Stars

My reading list this morning had three blog posts in a row about hexagons - Metanoia's, Sue's, and Julia's. I thought I better get my act together and show the progress I've made on Texas Star! I've joined a few together to see how they will look:

I did this a few weeks ago, but somehow I put them away without taking a photo. I think this is why:

If you look carefully you can see that the upper left one in the second photo is turned the wrong way. Easy to fix, but it annoyed me at the time!

All the blog posts today made me nostalgic for simple hexagons. If I ever do another paper-pieced project after this one it will be back to hexagons and nothing but hexagons. I have been having a heck of a time with the white diamonds in these stars. This is what happens:

I think this keeps happening because the white fabric is quite a bit thicker than the print. I am going to try shaving off a bit of the diamond paper template before I start next time, and see if that helps.

Anyway, the Texas Star Ticker in the right sidebar is up to number 66 today, which is just past 20% done. Plenty left to do!

First Couple for Août

All twelve of my monthly samplers from Bonheur des Dames feature this young, enraptured couple in the centre:

Here they are dressed for the country in August. This time around I have decided to finish each motif completely before starting the next. When I did the Juin sampler I got stuck with all the tiny backstitching at the end, which was quite a chore. But it's not so bad in small doses!

Not much to show, I know, but even this minute little finish is heartening these days. I've had so many distractions!

Hourglasses Before & After

I know it's been a month since I've posted any actual sewing, but I'm in the long, same middle parts of a lot of projects, so there's nothing really new to show. The past few days, though, I've been making strides on my hourglasses quilt.

It's been great for using up all those 5" square freebies I've picked up here and there. The blue and the green fabric above were favours from the Trenton Quilt Guild's show last year. The light fabrics are both more of my infamous Rite Aid fabrics.

My quilt guild Rouge Valley has just firmed up it's next quilt show date for early April 2014. So the pressure's on! Maybe my show quilt will be Riviera Star, or maybe it will be this one, the hourglasses. I think this could be a fun show quilt, for reasons not yet revealed, lol.

You may recall that the main purpose of this quilt was to use up the many, many dubious fabrics that I've accumulated over the years. All the following photos feature one brown Asian-style "faux patchwork" fabric, which is so hard to use. It was interesting to see what happened to it during piecing:

Not bad! Here's a higher contrast piece:

Also better than expected, I thought. The last one was rather serendipitous:

I like the way that wheel came out, although I'm pretty sure the top will be cropped off when I trim the blocks. Anyway, it's fun to see the new patterns emerge. There's still a long way to go!