2003-2004 Girl Gang Feathered Star

This quilt is one of my two oldest UFO's. It was the new Girl Gang project when I first joined the Girl Gang group is fall 2003. The group met at Cottons in Battle Ground, WA - a wonderful shop that was featured as one of the top 10 shops in Quilt Sampler magazine early on. As long as I attended meetings I kept up nicely - finishing the blocks for each month. I even put the year I expected to finish in the center block, figuring that would give me a year to quilt it after the last block was done.

Shortly after I started the Carolina Lily blocks Cottons suddenly announced they were closing in a couple weeks. Once the shop was gone the Girl Gang group that met there disintegrated, and I was no longer motivated to proceed. We did receive the rest of the patterns, but without the incentive of showing the finished blocks every month I moved on to something else.

Skip forward to November of last year. With only three long-term projects (formerly UFO's) remaining in the unfinished top stage - all applique projects - I decided to work on them all BOM style this year, as I explained in this post. I spent some of December prepping the blocks (all of which I finished during the "plague".) After I finished the two Carolina Lily blocks I figured I'd prep the other four blocks soon, so would need to put the quilt onto my design wall to help in choosing fabrics.

A couple days ago I spent some time putting everything up on the wall. I cut a bunch of setting triangles so I could arrange everything in the final set up. Sure looks different this way - much farther along than it looked with just the blocks hanging on a skirt hanger in the closet. When I stood back and looked I knew I'd have to get the rest of the blocks finished quickly - I was eager to turn it into a finished top. (Of course, I didn't discover that the lily block on the right is turned around the wrong way until AFTER I took the picture!)

I looked at it again yesterday afternoon as I was sitting appliqueing. I've decided I don't like the fabrics I chose for the setting triangles. So I have a new batch picked out - quite different from these - and tomorrow I'll cut new triangles to see if I like it better. I'll probably start prepping the remaining blocks - two eagles and two flower bouquets.

The quilt has a zigzag border on top and bottom outside the setting triangles to turn it into a rectangle, then four large appliqued borders to finish it off. Hopefully I'll be able to show you steady progress on this top the next few months. I'd love to have the top finished end of summer if not the beginning.