Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 9

Good morning! We finally got a sunny and warm spring in this neighborhood. Hooray! I have been pulling weeds and grass from the flower garden; and this weekend, I put out the drip hose. What a lovely task to do!

I want to draw your attention to a couple of items, the first one is from Slate.com, and I think it got posted about a month later than it should have.

The second item is for anyone who is a college student, thinking about becoming one, or is a recent one (or anyone who knows someone in this position). It is from the excellent blog, The Tenured Radical. I may not always agree with her, but this advice about finances is very much on target.

The weekend also included laying out and sewing together Section 9 of the Cone Nebula quilt. We are at this section:

I wanted a particular shade of yellow, so I pulled out all of the yellows I could find:

None of these was quite right - either too pale, too yellow, too orange, too variegated, or too brown. I found the perfect color, but there was a problem with the fabric (which is an unknown fabric I bought at the quilt guild's donated fabric sale last spring) - besides it probably not being all cotton, it is very thin:

I went ahead and cut out the pieces and then thought that I should stabilize them and just add a little body to the fabric. From the depths of my supplies, I pulled out some very thin 20-year-old fusible interfacing:

I didn't want to "thicken" the fabric so much as to give it a little help. I figured that between the heavy steaming and the sewing in, this would be a half-way decent plan. (Okay, to answer your question, all of my fingers were crossed during this process.) Here is the front side of a block using this:

Here's the reverse, showing how seams are our friends!

(see the faint web of the interfacing on those pieces on the lower left? Here is the completed Section 9. We have reached the three-quarters point of this project!

I sort of wondered about whether I should intercut the pale yellow and orange fabric (in the long yellow line), but I think it helps that section to "twinkle."

I hope everyone has a good week.