Block 7 Alice's Flag - The Ratification Banner

The block for this week was one created by Barbara Brackman and Becky to represent the ratification banner that Alice Paul made. Once each state ratified the 19th amendment to the constitution which would allow women equal rights, Alice would sew another star on her banner.

The colors chosen for the banner were, not surprisingly, golden yellow, white and purple. What is not clear - at least to me - is which order they appeared in i.e. was purple on the left or the right?

For my project there will be weeks when I have to just do the best I can to stick with my color scheme while also acknowledging a color that is integral to the block. For this week I found that one of my green prints had yellow in it so that is what I chose to use.

 I was at an all day bee yesterday and pinkdeenster was also there so we spent a bunch of time debating which fabrics to use. When she got home she did what we had decided would look good but I changed mine.

To begin with I thought that since this was a flag block it should use clear strong colors like a flag. But the more I looked at the size those pieces of fabric needed to be cut, the less sure I was about my choices. In hunting through the project bag of fabrics (it is getting very full now) I suddenly spied this purple strip fabric that was in the "maybe" pile beside the bag. In earlier blocks when others have made a similar star to this and used a stripe they have made the strip go the length of the diamond - to me it makes it look like a star fish which I don't really care for. But as I looked at this stripe I wondered what it would look like if I cut it the other way.

It looked pretty good and I got a pentagon effect.

For my map shot I show the rejected fabrics. The medium purple to the left had been one of the flag backgrounds but it got taken out. The very dark rich purple to the bottom edge was going to be the star. But it just did not have enough interest I decided. So it too got thrown into the sea to wash away for the meantime - maybe it will come to shore for some other block.

I do do other sewing and sometimes I even plan to put it on the blog. Maybe this week I might get to some other subjects. It was a three day weekend of quilting this week (Friday Bee,Saturday Sewing and then today a talk and show and tell with Gail Garber) and this coming week will again be a three day full on quilting weekend as I go to our Fall retreat. That means I have to get busy and decide which projects to take to work on; sort out fabrics and make sure I have the right supplies for what I am going to work on. This never happens for those quilters who work on only one project at a time but I invariably have at least six quite active projects at once and another six or so that I could pick up again.

Still, it could be worse. I could be bored and have to resort to watching television or eating chocolate.