Progress on my Bali Wedding Star

If you had told me in March that I would only today complete "phase 1" of the paper piecing for this quilt top... I would never have started this project!  No, I don't work on it daily and sometimes I have weeks that I don't touch it but still...   I signed up for this Judy Niemeyer pattern/class at one of our local quilt shops.   I have another of her patterns in my sewing studio for YEARS but the 40 pages of instructions always left me a little unsure about jumping in even though I am an experienced paper piecer.  When I saw this class was offered over 3 sessions/ 1 per month I thought this would be a perfect chance to work with the pattern and I would meet people since I am new to the area.  The quilt shop also offers a "sew in" on Fridays.   Perfect.  My plan was to sew on Fridays and have this complete @ the end of 3 months.   It was my intention to leave this all in my travel stuff... work on it on  Fridays and then those classroom times on Saturdays.  Wrong.   I really needed my sewing room to spread out at the cutting board, ironing board and sewing machine plus 1 day only gets about 1 strip set done.

Finally, I have all the strip sets completed and ready to move onto the next steps.  We did complete one of all the components in class so we know what/how to complete the quilt.  11 strips sets comprised of A and B units, 8 sets of each strip set for a total of 176 strip sets.   If you have paper pieced, you know that more time is spent at the ironing board and cutting table than at the actual sewing machine.   I think this is the worst of it and everything else is going to sew up faster.   I hope!

I also was never even sure all my colors would work well together but they seem to be playing together OK.  

Each strip set has an A and B arc.  When I know final placement, those "white" papers will get one of the 4 colors for the setting units.  I chose an orange, pink, teal and black for my setting colors.

These are the next units I will work on.  4 colorways for each section.

Trimmings from today.

An example of what the  completed units will look like.

Both the boys and Kricket decided yesterday that I must be lonely in my sewing studio so they brought their DS games in and joined me.   Ahhhh, that was sweet.

This is Block 3 that I worked on last week while traveling.   Not washed or blocked yet.   I've got the bug and can't wait to get started on the next Brutus block from Bronwyn Hayes.   I started this project in Hawaii and have not touched it since I returned 2 summers ago!!!!

Meanwhile, there are quilts waiting to be quilted.  Back to work.