Postage Stamp and Stars

I have had many complements on the Postage Stamp quilt and the Border.  Some have asked where did the pattern come from or did I design it?  I can’t taken complete credit for the border.  I kind of used a pattern but yet I didn’t cut one piece out from the book it came from.  The book is by Wendy William’s  there is a pattern in it for a wall hanging that is what I based the border on.  It had clamshells and I had paper templates for it and all the flowers and birds in the border have similar ones in the book but I cut them free style out of wool with no patterns – I did this by looking at the designs and then making my own.  Because the designs are whimsical there is no strive for perfection – you cut the flower or bird or whatnot as you wish – you can trace patterns if you want to.  At this post back in March of 2016 I was working on the clamshells if you are interested in how I did it.

Here is where I started to quilt the final border on Sunday night.  Linking to Mrs. Sew & Sow today and MCM#67 and Esther’s Quilt Blog.

Work progressed on Murrieta Stars yesterday – it was such a cloudy day and it looked like it could rain at any time so I didn’t do any garden work – then of course it didn’t rain until late afternoon although other parts of the state got thunder storms.  So seeing as I was inside I was working on stars.  Ten of the 30 stars are finished.  I really wasn’t sure what to expect with flannel having never made a flannel quilt before – it is a dream to work with!!!  I was told I might get a lot of lint – nope! after I finished these ten I thought I would look and clean the machine – there was barely any lint gathered up – so nice!

These stars are really easy to work – they go quickly.  I work in sections – here you can see I have made the geese and the center – I chain piece all the time – I like to save thread and I’m constantly just feeding pieces through the machine.  Lighting is not a day light bulb in the living room – I miss that!

I mainly use one pin for the flying geese sections – I put a pin through the point and then use my fingers to hold the pieces in place as it goes through the machine – I do press as I finish sections like you can see in the above photo – I finished that and pressed and then took it back to the machine for the next sections.

these are now done and I press the seams open as flannel is thick and I am not sure if I will be hand quilting or machine quilting either way you want those seams to not be so thick were so many pieces are joining.

The pattern suggested pressing seams open – I don’t know if they meant every seam or like I did.

Each block takes less than a half an hour if you just stick with it and not keep getting up to do other things.  Because I do not have the iron right next to me it takes a couple minutes more than it might take you as I get up and walk to the kitchen to iron – every step counts you know when you are trying to get in your ten thousand a day!