It's looking great! I love the monkeys, too.

Randomish question: do you press your seams open, or off to one side? (Does that make sense?) I've made one quilt and pressed my seams open, but then heard that if the allowances are pressed all to one side it makes the seam stronger.

Megan, I usually press my seams to one side (usually the darker side unless the block construction requires it to be the other way) just like I learned in my beginning quilting class. For this star quilt, however, I followed the instructions in the pattern. It has you press the seams of all the half-square triangles open. (I have read that it's a good idea to press seams open whenever many seams will come together, like in the center sections of this star, to reduce the bulk.) After that, this quilt has you press seams in one direction, but I have to say that I don't love the instructions, since it often has you cover the points with the seam allowance making it harder to catch that point exactly in the next seam. Know what I mean?

Hey Suzanne, thanks for always sticking around and commenting when I'm doing my quilting! :)

Knitting tomorrow again, I promise folks!!

Wow! You are inspiring me to move beyond square and rag quilts. Your triangle math is very helpful too. (In the past, I just cut extra large and then cut the excess off after they were sewn.)

That sock monkey quilt is going to be adorable. I am really looking forward to seeing your progress.

No apologies necessary. I'm a quilter and a knitter myself and I love to see all of your projects. The moda fabric is fabulous and I can't wait to see how they both come out.

I bought a bunch of sock monkey materials last summer, and I don't even quilt and barely sew. I don't know what came over me, but it was all so cute!

I'm amazed at how well you've lined up all your points!

Hey I was also forced by sewmamasew to use the sewing machine again. In fact, I just got my machine back from major surgery and my daughter asked me for an own quilt. What Mama would I be to say no :) So i found myself a nice book last week and started in the weekend with the block. Although I refere to myself as the one who can not sew I try now to complete my second quilt. You can see the beginning on my blogg.

Ah and have you already found the sewers group on ravelry?

Liebe Grüße

Sibylle

Wow, Alison, I love that yellow star!

It looks so crisp and neat.

I thought you said you couldn't sew.

It gives me hope.

Hey Sibylle, I went to your blog to see your quilt - it looks great! (I tried to leave a comment, but it thought I was spam or something.) I love all those pinks and the pop of blue here and there. It's really fun. Great job! :)

Those are going to rock! Just think, you don't have weave in the ends, just snip them off.

Alison thank you for the compliment, the shown blocks are only a bit more than the half of all. I am still unsure if the blues are not to bright, but we will see in the end. To comment on my blogg you have to fill in an email or http-adress, but I can also ask the admins to free you normal email, if it was the one you tried to use. Blogg.de hat major spam issues so they made the system picky about the commenters :)

So impressive! I love watching your progress on the quilting front, and those monkey fabrics are just too cute for words :)

Hi Alison,
seing all you nice fabrics I came to think of this swedish homepage www.thilde.se. They use the fact that babies like to touch the washing-marks of clothes. It's easy to copy their idea!
You could make a nice pillow with your monkey-fabrics and a few ribbons.
kind regards,
Signe from Denmark

Cool stuff, Signe! I love the big rabbit dolls with the tags all over them. And the super colorful pacifiers. What fun stuff you all have up there in Scandinavia!