The end is in sight

The end of our Greek summer, and of piecing the stars of Travel Quilt #2.

Today I basted the last of the star patches onto the plastic templates.  I have 7 stars to piece, and then a bunch of light blue background pieces to work in.  It won't be done before we leave Wednesday, but I'm really happy with the progress I've made.  I thought I'd take the time to upload a few pictures taken over the life of this quilt..

This was the beginning-- fall 2007.  Ahh, the good old days, when Costas would play his guitar while I sewed.  (this was his facebook profile picture for a long time.. until we had George, i think.)

Even though I had a lot of random fabrics from the beginning, my hopes were for this quilt to be mostly blues and greens.

That didn't exactly happen.  Looks like I'm a more "use what you have" type girl than I realized. 

I keep these two photos in my sewing kit-- the one above shows the part that's finished already-- what I left in NY just before we came to Athens.  The one below shows the color placement of what needed to be done.  I had never laid out an entire section like this before-- I always just pieced stars and then arranged them as I liked once I had 4 or 6 ready.  But now that I was so close to the end, I wanted to take exactly what I needed with me on this trip because I had hoped to finish it.  It was kind of strange working from this photo-pattern.  I kept having to look at it and lay it out so I wouldn't mess it up.  Very unlike me... usually I leave room for a little "fate" in my block placement :) 

And the last pic is a close up of how I started burying my knot at the start of piecing-- I take 2 or 3 teensy stitches and end at the corner I want to start sewing.  I have also started backstitching a few times at the end of my thread.  I really hope this quilt holds together for a long time...

It's already 11 p.m. so I should probably skip stitching tonight and just head to bed.  Tomorrow will be full of packing, sorting, and laundry.  I think we have a million people to say good-bye to as well.  But it was a good trip, such a good trip.  I'm actually leaving this time thinking it might not be so bad if we came to live here someday.. (mom, don't cry..)