*gulp* I finally did it.

Have you ever had a piece of fabric you want to use *only* for the "perfect" project? You pet it, consider options....then put it back. Might repeat that scenario many, many times over a few days, weeks, months...years. So it was with my retro Hello Betty jelly roll.

I bought it in 2008 or 2009, IIRC. Wandering around the Houston Quilt Festival, I had already impulsively purchased a marbled solid jelly, a Kaffe half-jelly, when I came upon the Hello Betty. Marked down to $20, I purchased it with money that *probably* could've been spent on food or something :) It was kind of exciting, for some weird reason...

Anyway-within the first month, I used the marbles for a bento box type top (still in blocks). I added a ton of white and some bright solids to the Kaffe half-jelly to create the blocks I put together a few weeks ago into a queen-sized top (need to layer & finish!) But the Betty remained. I purchased other fabric, of course...finished other projects. But Betty had to have the *perfect" project.

To be honest, I have no idea why I protected it so much. At the time I bought it, I was definitely more into the bright Kaffe style colors-lots of bright pinks, teals, oranges. Betty was more muted, with her dark teals, browns, rusty-red oranges. She was-dare I say?-grown up. That would be a "grown up" quilt for me.

I will say that impulse purchase did influence the colors I choose to use more these days. I use a lot of oranges, teals, greens-slightly more muted colors. I have two lap-quilt sized Chrysalis floppies, the gold & orange FQ set I bought at HQF a few weeks ago is joining teal and (probably) pink in a Lone Star quilt. My Kaffe & Hoopla quilt are the brightest of recent projects :)

I'm rambling again. Anyway, yesterday I decided to finally cut my Betty open (sounds so morbid!) I laid out my strips, grabbed my 60 degree diamond ruler and started to cut. When I finished, I had 560 diamonds cut, separated into snack bags by print (so, 20 bags). The plan? FINALLY make my six-pointed star quilt. By hand.

sorry, it's dark-took this pic at 2am!

Oh yes, I am marking each diamond so I can hand piece them together :) What could be more perfect??? A star quilt I love, a precious jelly roll that gave me coordinated strips and a diamond ruler to be as accurate as possible without needing paper piecing. I have 3 stars finished-I'm going to separate the stars with a creamy pale yellow that matches some of the prints but isn't a major color. I need to print out a diamond layout so I can decide how many stars to make. I know I have at least 90 full stars, and I can mix and match any leftover diamonds to make half blocks or mixed blocks. I'm excited!!! It'll probably seem like forever, but if I can find the time to get 2-3 stars finished a day, it'll take a month or two to finish piecing. With Kaden's obsession these days of blocking my machine, handpiecing might be the way to go if I actually want to finish anything!

I also need to get more of these Disney Princess pencils-they do such an awesome job marking fabric! They're "pop pencils" where the tip gets pulled off and pushed up the bottom to bring up an new, sharp tip. Found in the dollar bin at Michaels...wonder if they have them still? Might even be discounted! Ooh... (I would search later but I was already the crazy lady buying a bunch of photo boxes to keep projects organized in! Found *8* houndstooth print boxes-LOVE THEM.)