I was planning on trying to finish the slanted four patch quilt on the weekend… but I just wasn’t up to sewing long rows this weekend.

Instead I decided to focus on something new. A few weeks ago, we learned that one of our Post Office ladies will be retiring at the end of April. I think that calls for a quilt!

I dug in into the deep stash and came up with a line I’ve had forever. It’s called Go Tell the Bees… and it’s appropriate, because 1) This area is known for honey production and the town mascot is Alvin the Bee, and 2) she’s not really a post office lady – she actually works for the township office, and part of her duties involve dealing with parcels that don’t fit in our post office boxes. (Basically, the township office doubles as a retail postal outlet).

I knew I wanted something somewhat traditional, but I only had two charm packs (they were bought way back when I didn’t have a lot of quilting experience), so what I could actually do with them was pretty limited.

Burton and I spent a good morning on the design bed playing around with combinations. Finally we settled on floating stars.

You all know how I love star blocks! And the floating star is one of the easiest! It’s basically a nine patch with a little extra snowballing.

But.. to do stars, I’d need something for the star legs. I went stash diving again.

I came up with this lovely light rusty orange. It matched perfectly with some dark tones in the prints of the charm pack. (There’s something to be said for having a very large stash!). It was also a wonderful contrast to the dark purple squares I planned to use as the centre of each block.

To make the floating star, you take four of your charm squares, and start snowballing. First one corner.

Then the second

Instant star legs! And the best part of making floating stars – it’s impossible to lose your points!

After that, it’s just a matter of assembling your nine patch

It took the rest of the afternoon, but by dinner time, we had 12 beautiful floating star blocks.

Now, of course, I’m going to get a little fancy with the layout – but that’s for another day. One where I’m up to sewing long seams.