Project Peek

Hi Everyone,

I'm back with the promised peek at the design wall.  I got all the blocks arranged and am in the process of sewing them together.  I can't believe how quickly this project is progressing!

First though, I woke up to a big disappointment.  Ever since we lived in Alaska for 4 years, we've become big Iditarod fans.  The Iditarod is the the annual 1049 mile sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome.  It starts the first Saturday in March and it takes around 9 days for the winner to cross under the burled arch in Nome (the finish line.)  For the past day or two, the frontrunners included Mitch Seavey (an Alaskan musher whose father helped start the race, who won the year of our first Iditarod when we lived in Alaska, and the father of last year's winner, Dallas), Aliy Zirkle (a cool female musher who has always been a favorite of mine), and Jeff King (a four-time winner one of which was also when we lived in Alaska.)  Well, no woman has won the Iditarod since 1990 when Susan Butcher won her fourth.  The first woman to win was Libby Riddles and she just did so once, so a woman has only won 5 times.  Aily was only 13 minutes behind Mitch when they left White Mountain--the checkpoint with the last 8 hour mandatory rest.  When I went to bed, it looked like Mitch was going to be first to Safety, the last checkpoint before Nome.  I was still hoping that Aliy would pass him, but when I woke up, it was to the news that Mitch had won (by 23-24 minutes).  I am so disappointed--actually much more so than I thought I would be.  I guess I will have to cheer myself up with some quilting!

Without further delay, here is the photo of my design wall.

 Can you see that there are cream/tan stars being formed in the pools of blues?  I choose all the turquoise/blue that I could find that seemed to be ocean colors.  Inititally my plan was to have the blue stars on the cream background, but then I thought that if the background was all blue, it would look more like water.

All the fabrics are batiks and not my normal palette, but it is fun to take a break from the usual.  I think it is a bit like going on vacation--to the beach maybe!  I wasn't a batik person at all until I got to Hawaii.  All the colors of the ocean there really influenced me to collect these fabrics.

Hopefully I will get them all together today.  The pattern is Bali Stars from a Kim Brackett book, Scrap-Basket Sensations.  Have you seen that her new one is out?!  I've got my copy ordered.

Have a great day!
JoAnne