Lone Star: all points done

I finished piecing the central star in R's Lone Star quilt a few days ago. I settled on a blue fabric for the setting pieces: a reproduction Lancaster blue that we got at the PA quilt show in Harrisburg a couple years ago. I'd been saving it--now I know for what.

Most of the setting pieces are attached to the central star now; I only need two squares and one half-square triangle. I'm paper-piecing these as well, and they're kind of floppy and ungainly to work with, but it seems the right approach since I'm butting them against rows of paper-pieced diamonds with the backing still intact and basically joining like parts together.

I pieced four small Lemoyne stars to center in the four setting squares, and have appliqued two of these in place so far. With any luck, I may get the other two finished this week and the three remaining blue pieces attached. At that point, I'll need to decide on borders. I'm thinking a triple border would look great. We'll see.

Here's the second small star I was appliqueing two nights ago; you can really see the Lancaster blue fabric too (I'll take pics of the whole top once it's ready for borders--soon, I hope):

Bibliomancy

Click here to read a fine poem by Miriam Greenberg over at 42opus . . .

Classes started yesterday. I'm teaching three days a week instead of five--hooray--and hope to get some writing done at home on Tuesday mornings. Today I've been playing catch-up with the press. Trying to get completely back on schedule by the end of the month. It'll be tight, but I think we can do it.

We've been fortunate to have missed the heavy snows that socked so many others. I've warned my morning class to check the college's web page on rough weather days--I won't drive through that for a one-hour class--so of course they're probably rooting for heavy weather. Even in poor driving conditions, I think I can make the commute in time for my afternoon classes, though I'm still not crazy about being out in sleet or heavy snow. Of course this is all hypothetical so far--no actual winter storms yet. Even my holiday trip to Cincinnati went without delay. Lucky, lucky.

On Thursday, I'm attending an all-day workshop at the Writing Center at Bucknell, "Integrating Writing and Learning Across the Curriculum" with Katy Gottschalk and Keith Hjortshoj. Looking forward to that.

Over on Facebook, a recurring meme is making its rounds again: the one where you grab the nearest book, turn to page 54 and post the 5th sentence on the page. I'd forgotten how fun this random selection can be. Not exactly bibliomancy, but mild fun for anyone who loves language and accident's potential . . .

Lone Star update

I took the Lone Star quilt top along to Cincinnati and was able to make some progress: three of the "arms" are finished now, and I've started "auditioning" background fabrics. A darker print seems appropriate--I had been thinking about blue, but this one looks nice:

The photo was taken with my cell phone, so the quality's not the best.