Round Robin--Round 2

It's hard to believe that June is already over, but that also means that round one of the mini round robin between myself, Sandra at mmmquilts, Julie at Pink Doxies and Cindy at Stitchin at Home is also over too.  At the end of May I mailed my block, The Attraction block to Julie for her to work her magic on.

In return, Sandra shipped the center for her mini quilt to me.

This block was speaking to me before it ever showed up in my mail box.  "Friendship Stars."  That is exactly what she was saying.  It was kind of funny because normally I would have discussed this project with Sandra, but this time I couldn't.  She really wanted to be surprised.  I however was dying to bounce this idea off of someone.  Lara at Buzzin Bumble and I have been emailing back and forth from comments on each other's posts, so I bounced my idea off of her.  Lara, I'm not sure what took us so long to connect??  But I'm sure glad we did!  She was just as excited about my idea as I was and sent a mock up drawing.  It was like she was in my head.

Since my stars needed to be 3" blocks I wanted them to be as accurate as possible.  I made the decision to paper piece them.  Not my normal choice of piecing, but I wanted perfection.  I used EQ7 to print off a paper piecing template and made a test block.  Yup, it was do able.  For my fabric selection I decided to stick with blue, green and a hint of purple to pull colors from Sandra's block.

Half of the stars would be green with a purple center and the other half blue with a purple center.  I printed off 12 star templates.

And began cutting squares.  Lots of squares.  Lots and lots of squares: 96 background, 12 purple center, 60 green and 60 blue.  A total of 228 squares, but who's counting.  That's a whole bunch of squares for a 3" border.  But they were worth every rotary cut.

They actually stitched up much quicker than I anticipated.

And in no time at all this little Quilter's Retreat star block had it's first addition added.  The border of friendship stars represent all of the friendships made and nurtured during the little quilter's retreat taking place inside of that building. 

 Can't you just hear all of the laughing and fun going on right now?

So round one of our mini round robin is officially finished.  This little block is currently making it's way to Julie for her to work her magic on and Sandra is shipping Cindy's block to me.  Hopefully, my spidey senses will start tingling any moment now.  Since Sandra lives so far away, I think it has to travel through customs and possibly a few states before I can start hearing it.   

To check out the progress on the other blocks in our little round robin make sure you visit, Julie at Pink Doxies, Sandra at mmmquilts and Cindy at Stitchin At Home.

Today I'm linking up with Linky Tuesday, Sew Cute Tuesday and  Main Crush Monday.