Quiltingboard Forums - I Am Driving Kathy Crazy on This Trip Around Tim's Compass Star

thanks, all, for the compliments. they will keep me going 'til it's done and delivered. this project has also been a good lesson in humility. i designed this layout in the firm belief it would be a piece of cake and go together in just a few days. i've discovered, however, that i have a really hard time keeping track of the colors; which goes where, etc - even when i have color printouts of each block to guide me. :roll:

ok ... to the questions:

"How the heck did you get Tim's star to be a circle in the middle? Is the circle a block?" i'm very fortunate in having the Electric Quilt software. I had already drawn Tim's design for the star into a square block for our 15 July block-of-the-month. i just changed it for this to set it into a circle instead. i did the corner quarters using templates and the center using a combination of templates and paper piecing.

"Holy cow!! You don't have to twist my arm to get me to NOT try that baby." please don't say that. if i can do it, anybody can do it. my design made this particular quilt more difficult than it would be normally because the blocks had to face specific directions. if i do it again - and i will someday - i'll have my lessons learned from this one to make it easier. anybody who pays better attention than i did while putting it together would also have more success with much less stress. :lol:

"That is gorgous... I know I would never be able to do that one..." again - you absolutely, positively, could do this quilt.

"I am sure I will NEVER try that star. promise " Believe it or not, the star was the easiest part. don't ever let fear stand between you and a quilt block.

"Look at those points! Will I ever be that good?!! I'm super impressed. Teach us! " as you can see from the super closeups, not all the points are perfect. (luckily, the mistakes don't jump out and slap ya in the kisser. :lol: ) i'm not yet qualified to teach these. but thanks for thinking so. :P

i am disgustingly proud of this quilt so far, and i'm all smiles from your praise and encouragement. but i also know that i am not a better quilter than anybody here. you all have the skills for something like this. (several among us are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better at this than i am. :lol: ) Being "good enough" is mostly a matter of deciding you CAN do it. after that, it's just a matter of perserverance and practice.

i haven't made up my mind yet about the quilting. i want to keep it simple, though. i don't want the quilting to distract attention from the patterns created by the piecing. just enough to hold it all together, i think.