Martha's Star Is Rising

Martha's Star

Remember Martha's Star that I had sketched out?

Well, I dug into my fabric bins and found the lovely turkey red that I picked up at The Quilting Bee in Fonthill when we were down on vacation last summer. I just love it - it's the perfect combination of red and coral and the little bits of taupe in it play nicely off the café au lait pieces that surround the centre block in the Ohio Star blocks that I am using. This photo is showing it a little pinker than it really is, but it's nice none the less.

Anyway, it's all nicely washed and ironed now so the cutting and sewing has begun for the alternating Single Irish Chain blocks.

I was a little concerned that I would need to go out and find a few more tone on tone creams but I found 2 or 3 in my stash so I'm thinking I should be okay. But I did have a bit of an episode with my iron when I was pressing everything...

I've been meaning to clean the iron for I don't know how long now and haven't so it finally decided to force the issue. See the brown streak that's running across this piece of cream? That's part of the entrails from my iron! Thankfully I was able to soak it out and no fabric was killed in the making of this quilt, but it did give me a little start. I really should get on top of these little things sooner. On the up side, now that I have cleaned the iron it is working much better than it had been :).








Anyway, since that bit of excitement there's been lots of cutting, with lots more to come...

And I'm loving the red with the colours in the stars...

Each Irish Chain block has 49 pieces to it so it takes about an hour to assemble one, but slow and steady wins the race. I am a list person so I track my progress on a little heart shaped stickie note from a pad that Lili brought me from a recent quilt show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. If you look really closely you can see two hash marks in the upper left of the heart. I've made a few more since this pic was taken - I think I might be up to 6 or 7 now. Depending on how large I make the quilt I need around 30 full blocks and then about 16 half blocks for the outer edges, so it's not like this one will be finished in a week, but it is worth the wait....M