That prize winning spirit

I am making a calendar quilt to commemorate this year.  The abbreviated version is that I was going places and collecting little bits of fabric without a plan.  But, I noticed that they usually went really well together, even though their only relationship was that they reflected my mood for the day.  So I decided to put them together as a memory of the month and then turn those memories into a quilt.  I picked the feathered star block because that has been a very prevalent block this year. 

Then, that plan adapted to me actually looking for fabrics that would go well together.  And, now, it's gone so far as I don't actually have to buy the fabrics in the month, as long as they have some relationship to something that happened in the month.  The beauty of making my own rules is that I can break them and nobody really cares.

So, the block I made was for July.  July was the month we got married... well, one of the times we got married.  Independence Day and marriage had to come together and I made a plan.  With just a bit of a color adjustment to the pattern, I thought I could put a gold wedding band into my feathered star block.

This is what the block looks like in just two colors, so I can show how I tried to get that gold circle. 

First, I cut the kite shape (the largest red piece in the blocks above) out of paper and drew on all the seam lines.  Then, I drew a line where I wanted to seam two pieces of fabric together. 

 

I measured the distance from that bisecting seam line to the points.  I cut a 5" strip of the red and two 1.25" strips of the gold and sewed them together.  I laid that template on the strip set and cut the kite shapes out of it.  I laid a ruler over the paper template, lining up the edges, then cut the piece using the ruler as a guide so I didn't cut my template.  (Thank you Sally Collins!)

One kite used one gold strip, then I turned the template so that the next kite used the other gold strip. 

It didn't come out quite as circular as I would have liked, but it's cool.  It's the thought that counts, right?  I accidentally used a stripe in the background fabric and spent a good bit of time getting all the stripes to run in pleasing ways. 

All the large background pieces run in the same direction, and all the pieces in the feathers are pieced in pleasing directions around that. 
 

That took a lot of planning, and there are some feathers in a box near the sewing machine that were made while I was figuring it out.  Oh, well.

Okay, that's it for me today.  Straighten up the studio, and then I want to work on some applique.  I need to prepare some pieces.  I need TV watching handwork.  I haven't had anything out in a couple weeks and I have spent entirely too much time on my phone... not watching cat videos.

Everybody have a great Sunday!  Lane