What next???

In between washing and painting the bedroom walls and organizing wool, I have had bits of time to work on my Gail Garber quilt. You saw the photo of the flying geese and the three stars….with my comment, what’s next? I decided, after walking around it on the kitchen floor one morning, that the space needed to be filled up a bit, so I went downstairs and drafted some small stars. This is a picture of my trash can in the midst of paper piecing. Usually there are fabric bits all over the floor as well but I positioned the basket in the right spot. I don’t throw these fabric scraps away until the project is completed. Turned out that the stars I drafted were so small that I was able to rummage through the basket to find the pieces I needed.

One of my favorite parts about paper piecing is “the reveal”. I am a particularly messy PPer, so when I trim it is quite dramatic. Here the shape emerges.

And then the star is revealed when all the wedges are sewn together!

I also made a few medium-sized stars as well. These are about 9″ in diameter and the small ones about 5″.

One reason that I wanted to add paler stars was that I’d like to draft a pale flying geese strip, and hoped that the pale stars would make that design element make more sense. And I do like details on quilts that you have to step forward to see.

Peter suggested that I decide on the top and bottom of the piece, which was a good comment and I’m still thinking about that. Carol at Quiltfever wondered if the quilt had to be the size that I had laid out, and no, it doesn’t. I just cut 3 pieces of freezer paper and started to arrange. The final size is not determined yet nor have I thought at all about whether there will be a border.  So let’s see what the design might look like from a different direction. Looking at photos of a quilt in progress is so helpful; there is something about the impersonality of a camera lens. And thanks to the digital age I no longer have to run to the one hour photo place! (I think I might like the bottom view better…)