Florence, AL

We have docked at a marina here along the Tennessee river, which means unlimited air conditioning. And that means I can sew anytime the mood strikes, hurrah! I immediately launched into making this month's blocks for Covered in Love. Kat asked for any type of star block in any combination of red, white, and blue.

Since I have never made a quarter square triangle before, I decided to try a couple of old fashioned star blocks that use the shape. The one on the left is an Ohio Star, and the two others are Spinning Stars. The patterns have been around for such a long time that they are probably known by other names, too.

The dark blue fabric in the corners of the middle star is really gorgeous in person. Unfortunately, I only had a small scrap and wish there had been enough to use where the small white triangles are so the star would be completely surrounded by the blue. It will be fine in a big quilt filled with many different scrappy stars, though.

I've also been plugging away at the Pretzel Twist pattern, which I'm going to call Twist N Scrap. I've known a lot of pretzels, and this, sir, is no pretzel. So far, so good on the polyester blend background fabric.

This quilt is a bit tricky without a design wall. Ideally, I'd sew all the little subsections of each block that contain a single color piece and the background pieces. Then they would be placed on a design wall and arranged to make the interlocking squares, being careful to not end up with the wrong colors in the corners where the squares "run off" the edges of the quilt. However, there is no place in the boat where I can lay out everything and work on it over the course of many days. I use the bed as a design wall and that only works until bedtime! I can roll up the tablecloth I use to stick the blocks to, and put that back in the quilt room for the night, but that's a marginal solution with larger blocks and won't work well at all for lots of really little pieces. They'd just be a jumble when I unroll it.

So I'm sewing the size blocks you see in the photo: one full color square with four interlinked corner squares. Just have to take it slow and think about where each next color is going and whether it will eventually be a full square or a "run off" partial square.

I'll probably set the whole thing aside in the next few days and try to finish one of my Project Linus WIPs. My PL chapter is in Alameda County, California and I usually ship them. We'll be flying to the West Coast to visit family and friends and I'm bringing two PL quilts with me. Maybe I can make that three, or even four. Ambitious, but all things are possible with sufficient air conditioning!