The Twelfth Star and the Last Square

Well, this is all she wrote for the Groovy stack n' whack star blocks. Right here is the very last block. I think it turned out well from both a technical and visual perspective. The center looks reasonably well pieced and the colors that border the star are very complementary to the star itself, while still providing adequate contrast. A nice way to finish up the blocks.

And really not a moment too soon. I was getting to the point where I was getting a little bored with sewing up these blocks and looking forward to seeing them all together and figuring out what border I wanted to put on them. Originally, I was thinking about using the original Groovy fabric I used to cut the stars out from as the border. But now I am beginning to wonder if that will make the quilt feel too busy. Clearly a little time with the blocks and the Groovy fabric and a few pictures are in order.

I've been meaning to mention this for a while, and I imagine most of you are already aware of Clauida's efforts to raise money for the MS Society through a seriously long bike ride. She's done an incredible job so far -- she's well over her $30,000 milestone, which goes a lot towards showing the power of a friendly community and the Internet. She's also got some great prizes for people contributing to her fund raising -- though I know none of us needs prizes as an incentive to do good things. If you haven't had a chance to participate and have the funds to consider putting towards a good cause, I'd like to encourage you to think about it and pledge towards her ride.

MS is definitely a tough disease to live with -- and believe it or not, you can do a lot with $30,000 . It covers the significant portion of a salary for a young researcher for an entire year (I made $27,000 when I was a post-doc). Or an awful lot of research supplies. Or it could buy a piece of equipment to help a research group work on finding a cure or a better understanding of the disease. Or to help with therapy for someone suffering from the disease. According to the MS Society, over 400,000 people in the US, the majority of them women, suffer from this disease. So your donation really does help to give a lot of people more hope for the future.