Beothuk Star QAL-Celebrating a Famous Canadian's Birthday

If there isn't already enough birthday and holiday celebrations this month at my house with my birthday on the 14th, Father's Day on the 16th, Demando's birthday on the 18th and Granddoggie Daisy's on the 20th (it's like cake every other day-yum!), I also have a famous Canadian's Birthday, aka, Sandra, mmmi Quilts' father,  to celebrate on the 15th.  And there's no better way than to do this is by finally finishing my Beothuk Star Quilt in time for the celebration/Linky Party.

Depending on how you look at this, I've either completed the Trifecta or the Quadalupe of QALs hosted by Sandra, mmm! Quilts; nevertheless I've done them all and finally finished all them on time.  What I love about participating in Sandra's QAL is that I always used fabric from my stash plus her patterns make great use of my die cutter.  Also adding to the mmm-merriment are the wonderful sponsors she lines up. There's always ample time to construct the quilt but I've found that once you start the quilt you just can't stop, just like a good snack.

When the Beothuk Star QAL started back on April 3rd, I initially chose the fabric on the left but decided the fabric on the right would be better because of the stronger contrast.  Both fabric choices are Carrie Bloomston fabric lines.  With the exception of the Postcard from Sweden QAL, I once again improvised my background fabric by adding another print since I didn't have enough of the one print.  You can see that I added the khaki tan newsprint to go with the white newsprint which I think helped define the stars nicely.  It wasn't until the top was sewn that I saw my colors well represented the theme of the Beothuk Star being the red was for the Beothuk or Red Indian Tribe, blue for their spirit, yellow for their strength/hope, tan for the land/Earth and newsprint for the words that always need to be said or read to keep their memory/history alive albeit how painful it may be.  You can read Sandra's backstory of the Beothuk Star here.

I've already confessed to Sandra that I did not construct my quilt according to her thorough instructions since I used my die-cutter. So 3"x6" finished flying geese were made in place of some of the 3" half triangles and my quilt was constructed row by row but you wouldn't know it if I haven't mentioned it.   You can see that I was rather the daredevil by basting the quilt with straight pins and only having maybe one inch of batting/backing on all four sides.  I survived the numerous pricks on the fingers and hated it when the pins snagged against my legs. But the quilting was done under two hours.

One of the reasons why I chose to use the newsprint, besides it being very interesting, is that I could do KISS (Keep It Simple Sunshine) quilting by just doing quilting in the ditch and some diagonal quilting.  The Newsprint fabric is one of my favorite and I was very stingy in not wanting to use it for the backing so I used a tone on tone tan print which I won't bore you with a photo.  Really, I just forgot to take a photo of the back.  The binding was the tan newsprint though I thought of using the yellow fabric but it would have detracted the center star.

When I finished the Beothuk Star quilt Wednesday night, I knew the next day was supposed to be cloudy and rainy so I was thinking my photos for this post were not going to be so great.  Imagine my surprise when the Sun woke me up this morning so I quickly changed and went downstairs to take photos outside.  Since this quilt only measures 42" square, I knew there was no way the Master Quilt Holder was going to be able to crouch down to hide himself behind the quilt.  Thankfully, this past weekend he bought a new power washer for his Father's Day Gift, (yes, we buy our own gifts to avoid disappointment) and I knew the siding outside the front door was just cleaned with his new toy.  Also, I was fortunate enough to have green Frog Tape which I bought after reading Laura's Slice of Pi post about using it to hang up quilts outside on brick or siding, you can read about it here.  So, the quilt was photographed on the siding and it looked so nice.  Even when the wind blew, the green tape still held the quilt up. You can see some of it where the red arrow is pointing.  I think this wall is going to be my new favorite place to hang up my quilts for photographing.

Not to worry, the Master Quilt Holder won't be replaced by this roll of green Frog Tape.  I still going to need him to keep the siding clean with his new favorite friend, the power washer.  We're going have to give it a name.  It's funny that the power washer is the same color as the green tape.

I'm looking forward to joining the other Beothuk Quilts on the birthday of a famous Canadian.  Sandra did a great job with this QAL and I'm looking forward to her next one.  I already put my vote in for her to do one with her Luminous Layers Quilt, you can see it here.  I can tell you right now I'm going to have to find some pretty interesting fabrics to make up for the beautiful quilting that I know I won't be able to do.

Linking up with mmmi Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation, NTT.