I have been working on this wonderful quilt for the past year. It's not a secret, I promise. It's been one of my favorites - the quilt as well as the quilting group doing it with me. We started last January - 6 of us. Kim turned us onto Eclipse from Mainstreet Market Designs and now we call ourselves the Eclipsettes. We each chose our own colors - 24 of them for those of us following the pattern (some of us decided to use 12 colors instead). I went to Stitch On and got 24 small prints that skip oh so nicely around the color wheel. I also chose to go with the black background - I think the colors really pop.
So we decided to do 3 spokes a month, the spokes being paper pieced in 2 sections. They went together fairly easy and most of my fellow Eclipsettes are finished by now. I am almost caught up. Just some outter borders to go. The worrisome part is whether my outter circle and borders will fit nicely onto the inner circle. We'll see soon.
OK, so the quilt is great, but even better is the friendship we share. We talk, laugh, share quilting tips, eat, drink, laugh some more. I've gotten to know 6 beautiful women through this craft, just as many of our fore-mothers did. Last summer we went on a retreat at Kelly Ashton's The Creative Place so that we would have uninterrupted time to work on Eclipse and other projects. We had a blast. What happens at retreat stays at retreat.
In today's time of instant communication, media overload, and bad news all around, small, intimate groups of like-minded friends are my calm in a crazy storm. I can't over-estimate the value of these friends.
Although the year of Eclipse is drawing to a close, our group has decided to keep going. We were the Eclipsettes and now we are the Hueys (as in Getting to Know Hue).
If you find a group of friends like mine, cherish them as the treasures they are.
Agree, Denise - has been a great year! Look forward to Hueys!!
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