Heartstring quilt for a 9-yr old swimmer with Leg Cancer

I finally had a chance to work on a heartstring quilt that our church group, Peace by Piece Quilters, has been asked to make for a little girl with leg/bone cancer. She loves swimming, Hanna Montana, Jonas Brothers and I thought of a pattern we made a while back that had a star in the center. The first photo isn't the correct color, but the 'sectioned' photos show it better. It was a heartstring that we didn't have enough blocks to make even a small one, so I figured it I put a square of fabric over the heartstring block, drew a diagonal line and sewed a quarter-inch seam on either side of the line (use this line as a cutting line), then I ended up with twice the blocks. With a border around it, it worked well.

Since my sewing machine has been in the repair shop for a 'nose job', I yanked my 42 yr old Kenmore out of the cellar and set it up on my grandson's little card table to use... Other than the burning oil smell (dust in the back?? it was covered in the cellar), and the initial ruuh, ruuh, ruuh, ruh, ruh, ruhruhruhruhruhruh... it ended up working okay (I think this is the next one for the service dept.). Little crowded in this area, but it seemed to work.

This little guy was a great 'fill-in' for my Janome. ... Of course, it HAD to be. There was nothing else!

Back to sewing!!

The last two days have been a little scary, since I installed a 'passport' on my computer to 'back up everything', however, I stopped it at a halfway point and started deleting things off it. And I don't understand it fully. I couldn't start up my computer this morning with the passport plugged in, so I guess I have to have my DSS come an take a look at it.

That means I needed to go sew for a while (de-stress). I'm working on hearstring blocks that the Peace by Piece quilters (my church group)

http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/560673651AYbwPF have been making for a while,... the ones that turned into orphan blocks, because they were cut short, or were odd ones and we didn't send them to http://www.heartstringsquiltproject.org/ as single blocks. I've been saving them in a box not sure how to make them 'blend' in to the same quilt. So I browsed the heartstring site and Bonnie Hunter's http://www.quiltville.com/ and decided to make half string blocks

and 'quarter string' blocks with some purple fabric I had in my stash (I know, it looks blue, but it IS deep purple).Since the blocks were mostly trimmed to 9.5", I cut as many 9.5" purple squares as I could get out of the fabric (Stashbusters would be proud!), then found a lighter shade of purple in the same design-can you tell I like purple?- and ended up with a few odd 9" ends left. I just kept making them and making them untiI realized maybe I should leave some in stages, since I'm teaching my LQ Chapter how to make heartstring blocks on Tues. I also took two of the blocks and made 'quarter heartstring blocks to show them some variety. I ended using the 9" blocks, since I trimmed everybody down to 8.5" blocks.

After I got them done, I played on the design wall..... I think this has a pattern to it (?)...

I wasn't sure what to do with the quarter strings, thinking I only had this left,

then I realized I had two other blocks -my 'in stages' examples (which will make 4 half blocks when cut) so I may add them to this quilt. Once the examples are together I can trim them at the bottom to make hem match the smaller size of the corners.