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Welcome to Week Two of the Lone Star Tree Skirt Sew Along!  If you’re just joining us, it’s not too late.  The pattern is available here and you can jump in anytime.  We’re going to finish our tree skirts well before Christmas!

Last week’s video covered sewing the fabrics into strips and then cutting them into strips of diamonds.  This week we will sew the strips into eight large diamonds to make a star so BE CAREFUL  in handling your fabric.

You have a lot of bias edges and don’t want to stretch them!
Once again, the video is in two parts.  In them you will find all my tips for marking, pinning, and sewing.  I love this step because the beauty of the lone star begins to emerge.  Here we go!

The first video covers marking and pinning your strips together.

The second video covers sewing the strips together into large diamonds.

There you have it, eight large diamonds!


When the diamonds are sewn together, play with them to see how they look if you flip them around.  I’m planning to put the red diamonds in the center of my star, which will look like this:


But if I wanted to flip it around, it would look like this:


You can see that the star looks very different when I switch them!  Last week I shared photos of an unfinished mod lone star as I deliberated on which way to sew it together.  I’d like to focus more on value in the future; I’m sure I will learn a lot!

We will meet back here next Monday for week three of the sew along.  Please share your progress with the hashtags #lonestartreeskirt and #hopefulhomemaker.  I’ll be watching for them!

Remember that all posts for this project can be found on the Lone Star Tree Skirt Sew Along page.

Have a great week, and happy sewing!
Jennifer

Last weekend I attended a fun new quilt show at Thanksgiving Point, called Garden of Quilts.  The quilt show was part of Riley Blake’s 10th Anniversary celebration.  It featured quilts from their collection as well as the Fat Quarter Shop collection, in addition to quilts submitted by individuals and a few other special exhibits.


The Ashton Gardens at Thanksgiving Point are a gorgeous, 55 acre collection of gardens located in Lehi, Utah.  I have always loved walking through them.  Gardens and quilts:  can there be a more beautiful combination?


I submitted four quilts to the show and it was fun to wander until I found all of them.


My Prosper in Solids Quilt was in a pretty spot.


I wish I had a backdrop like this every time I photographed a quilt!


I found my Indigo Lone Star quilt hanging among some trees, and the moment I snapped this photo was perfect.  Do you see the dappled sunlight in a circle, highlighting the lighter ring of the star?  Perfect moment!


My Light quilt top is now a finished quilt, finished in time to submit to the show.  I was thrilled to find it with two of my dear friends who also worked on it.  I’ll share more of this quilt soon, as well as the fourth quilt I submitted.


In addition to hundreds of beautiful quilts and acres of lovely flowers and shrubs, The Ashton Gardens also feature a special Light of the World Garden.  The time I spent there was the most peaceful of all, among masterful statues of Jesus Christ, my Savior.


There were a few quilts that caught my eye, like this antique flag quilt in the Secret Garden, part of the private Ashton quilt collection.  The blue fabric faded, but the red is still vivid.






Watch for Garden of Quilts again next year.  I heard it will return, bigger and better, and I’m excited to see it.  I love being a part of the quilting community!

Once upon a time (or, nearly five years ago) I found a vintage quilt block that struck a chord with me.  That tiny image – called the prosperity block – became a project.  I eliminated y-seams and enlarged the block, sewed it all together and shipped my new quilt design off to Quilty Magazine.  To my complete surprise it ended up on the cover and I was elated.  Almost immediately followed a challenge in our family that rocked us and my creativity just dried up.  I couldn’t sew for months.  And so I never wrote my own pattern for the quilt.  Until now.  The Prosper Quilt Pattern is here !


In these photos I have remade the quilt using fabrics from Conservatory by Anna Maria Horner, chapter one release.  I wanted everything fresh in my mind while writing the pattern and using these three small collections was a great challenge for me.  These backlit photos create a lovely stained glass feeling that fits the mood of the Conservatory fabrics.


The Prosper Quilt Pattern is available for download in my Etsy shop.  When Quilty wrote the pattern for the magazine, they changed the fabric requirements.  I have kept my original requirements, making this a fat quarter friendly quilt.  Fabric cutting must be done carefully but I’ve made several of these and have always had success with fat quarters.  I named this pattern Prosper as well, one more way to preserve the vision and intent of my original design .


The blocks are gorgeous and so much fun to make.  The original quilt can be viewed here , and this is an all-solids version with different background colors .  I doubled the block size to make this barn style version and I’m working on a Christmas version that I’ll share soon.  The Prosper Quilt pattern is perfect for any style.  Purchase yours today!