Well, it seems there's no going back now: Google Reader will be finito as of Monday, July 1st. I had hoped that Google would see the outpouring of disappointment and rescue it from the abyss, but no such luck. So, if you use Google Reader to read my blog and loads of others, I don't want you to wake up on Monday with nothing to read! Here's some alternative ways to read my blog...

Bloglovin
Feedly
Blog by email
RSS feed for the RSS Reader of your choice
Facebook
Twitter

Personally, I keep going back and forth between Feedly and Bloglovin', both seem to be good alternatives that are fairly easy to use.

Are you still on the fence about how you want to read blogs starting next week? This LifeHacker article gives you lots of different options as well as the pros and cons of each. Have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend everyone!

It's been a super crazy couple of weeks in my neck of the woods. I feel like I've hardly sat at my sewing machine, save for a few stolen moments earlier this week when I whipped up the July block for the Lucky Stars Block of the Month Club. For those of you who hoped for an easier star after two really challenging ones, you're getting your wish! This month's star is a simple eight-template star, so we're going to take it easy this month!

I'm missing sewing terribly, but unfortunately, I don't see things changing too much for at a few more weeks. After a frenzied, stressful week and a half of house hunting, we've found ourselves a wonderful new house and are now in the oh-so-enjoyable process of moving. I've been a purging machine this week, lining up bag after bag to donate to Goodwill and even more bags for the garbage man! It's sad to think of packing up my sewing room, but I'm really excited about our new house, so I'm hoping that excitement will carry me through the move. So, if you don't hear much from me over the next few weeks, know that I'm purging and packing and wishing I was sewing!

I just finished up my last Pay It Forward (PIF) project, so combining that with the big destash I did on Instagram yesterday, I'm going to be spending the next day or so packing stuff for the post office. I'm excited to see what everyone thinks of their packages, I hope they'll enjoy them!

This last project uses negative space as a main design element. I love quilts with lots of negative space, but I also love block-based quilts, but in looking through my work, I haven't really done many quilts with lots of negative space, so I really wanted to work on something small with lots of negative space. I've got another negative space project going at the moment, but I'll share some progress on that one next week.

Stars a big obsession for me right now (I think the Lucky Stars Block of the Month club is a big indicator of that!), and I'm pretty sure my PIF person that I made this for is a big fan of stars as well. I've been sorting through my fabric a lot these last few weeks, taking out pieces that I wanted to destash, and I came across a piece of Lizzy House's Constellations and inspiration struck. Floating stars! So I started working on some EPP stars, using different shapes, to place on a sea of Constellations.

I'm really happy with how this turned out, from the simple but effective quilting to the matchy-matchy binding - I love that effect on minis - and I hope that it will be well loved. There are two simple hanging triangles on the back of the quilt so that it can be hung with ease.

Quilt Stats
name: Starry, Starry
size: 18" x 22"
fabrics: from my scrap bin!
pattern: n/a, but used various EPP pieces from my favorite source, paperpieces.com, including the kite, hexagon, equilateral triangle, and 8-point diamond
quilting: various fmq designs around each star in 40 wt Aurifil in color #2725
binding: Lizzy House Constellations Stars in Black

I hope you all have a great Friday and a fantastic weekend :)