Belated Progress on Stars

It's been over a week since the first stitching meeting of the Stars stitch along group. I've been waiting for some of the stitchers to send me photos of their progress, and waiting for me to take some of mine. My progress is almost negative but not quite. I ripped out most of the top left outside corner stitching because I wasn't happy with the way it looked and still have more to rip. Sigh. On the 28th, I got started on the first block, Marilyn Monroe. The stitches are probably a little advanced for this remedial stitcher, so I haven't gotten that far. Part of what I stitched then and since then will be kept, but two areas have to come out.

You can see the remains of the outer corner. I found it harder to rip out than expected. Why is that? I'll try to remove the last remnants tonight just to eliminate the reminder that I had to do it. The stitching on the Marilyn quilt block is in its bottom right quadrant and is going painfully slow.

I'm not happy with the way the diamond area stitched in purple looks. I can see the white canvas in places, and I thought it wasn't supposed to show. Maybe I'll hold off ripping this out until I've stitched the areas surrounding it. The other area I'm not happy with is the purple parallelogram to the right of this section. I used the two strands Tony specified, but it's not covering nearly as well as it should. I have already ripped out the same stitch that ran perpendicular to this one and below the square area because I found a mistake. Something tells me this is going to be a long, arduous stitching experience for me.

On to the progress of some of my fellow stitchers. You can keep up with Donna, who's making up her own overdye and colorway, on her blog, needleworker not in paradise. Here are some of the other colorways being stitched.

This is JoAnn's Jelly Bean. She started at the bottom because we were still waiting for the JL Walsh silk and wool to come in and the botton left block was the first logical place to start that didn't call for that thread. She also found it easier to work that area. This is project isn't called a BAP for nothing. I think this is going to be stunning.

A note about the JL Walsh silk and wool. When I called the dyer to check on the status, I learned that she would no longer be dying this particular thread. Her supplier has raised her minimum to such an outrageous sum that she simply can't afford to do it anymore, which is sad because it is a lovely fiber. She'll still be dying her silks, just not the silk and wool. But I digress.

Dawn chose the Morning Garden colorway, substituting an overdye that was close to the now-discontinued Morning Garden and following the rest of the colors and threads as specified. (The name of her color escapes me right now; I'll get back to you on that.) As you can see, she's almost done with Marilyn. I hate her almost as much as I hate JoAnn. Hahahahahaha.

Ferol is doing the Granite colorway. I find it wonderfully surprising because if you look at the skein of Granite, you don't readily see all the beautiful colors that you can pull from it that make this colorway so stunning. Ferol also is stitching the border differently. I like that.

You may have noticed that with four stitchers, you have four different approaches to preparing the canvas and starting the stitching.

So that's what I have so far. There are five other people, two of whom are doing my colorway, Peacock, with the rest doing Tony's original Plum Honey colorway.

kthxbai,