Paper pieced stars

On a visit to the quilt shop last fall, I picked up a book of patterns for paper pieced stars.  I set it aside with some fat quarters that I received from the board of the state quilt guild as a "retirement" gift after my term as president was up.  I worried that the blocks would look a bit washed out so I varied the background from neutral to periwinkle and set the blocks on point.  I added a little goldish brown to the mix and ended with a brighter periwinkle.  For the setting triangles I used foundation papers for 3" triangles which were much easier to make than the stars.  Once quilted, this will be a nice table runner, but unfortunately, it's now waiting in the closet along with several other projects.  I'll try to get a picture today.

I attended quilt guild Tuesday night and showed the Triple Barn Star quilt I made a few months ago. 

Also at guild, I picked up the last round robin quilt - Marie's - to work on, and I've been making friendship star blocks ever since.  It's red(ish), light gray, and blues, with a large pieced star in the middle.  I'm not sure what Marie plans to do with the quilt, but I do know she served in the Army during the Vietnam era.  Several of the rounds have been pretty plain, so the stars seemed quite appropriate to me.  But the quilt is around 48" x 48" so there are a lot of 4.5" stars to make.  I assume they'll take me a few days of solid work to finish.

Meanwhile, there are household and garden things to attend to.  The weather has been increasingly nice, so I need to get out and clean up the flower beds.  My knees have been giving me trouble lately, so I'll take it easy.  We have taken a few walks in the neighborhood, too, which has been nice after the long winter where we hardly walked at all.  

I finished reading Jennifer Chiaverini's latest book, The Patchwork Players.  It's very easy going which is nice after reading The Bullet That Missed, the third book in the Thursday Murder Club series.  The plotlines of those books can be very confusing with quite a few characters, but everything comes together in the end.  I thought our book group was planning to read the fourth book in the series next, so I thought I'd try to catch up before reading that one.  Instead, we're reading The Tokyo Express which isn't available on Kindle.  I'm reading a used paperback and hope I'll to finish before we meet next week.  We have a social week ahead with dinner out a couple times, so I'm not sure how much progress I'll make.  So far, it's moving along nicely, and I like the Japanese background.