Feathered Star block

I have been showing blocks as I finished them from a BOM being sponsored by my guild.  I decided to have the center of the quilt a Feathered Star, surrounded by a Seminole border and then the outer borders made up of the blocks.  I got the quilt top done today, It is around 80" square.  I am considering adding a top and bottom border to just get it to a rectangular size.  OR I could add a larger border just to the top like a pillow cover....hmm I kind of like that idea. 

Now the problem I discovered after I had the quilt top together.  This block has a big white square in the middle, but note the other blocks are more like a snowball block.  Well, I made the mistake of using the white background fabric in the flying geese blocks you see in the corners. In this picture they look a little darker than white, but that is just the blue shadowing through - in real life the shadow does not show up that much. Dadgum, this was the last block I made and wouldn't you know, it would be the one I really messed up.

 Hmmmmm..no way was I going to rip that out and fix it.   I considered appliqueing a block  over the white but that would probably be very noticeable. 

My solution - just color the white with a blue crayon and then iron it to get the wax out.  The background fabric is a white on white floral print, and when I colored it, the flower came through making it almost look like a printed fabric.  I think it looks fine now, hopefully no one will even notice I had to color it. 

 



Hexie Topper by Sandy Larsen



 
 
 
 
This month was the retreat month for my club, Stitchin' Friends.  I do a project/demo at each retreat, and for this year, I used Sandy Larsen's pattern Hexie Topper. I had purchased a pattern for each person and included it I their goody bags.  They each brought their own fabrics and we had so much fun seeing how each person's turned out.


This is the first one I made and used as a sample to show the members what we would be making at retreat.  It was a lot of fun to make and I thought the fabrics just looked like Spring to me.










My project for retreat involved apple theme fabrics that I thought would make a good Fall table topper.

For this one I had to piece some of the strips and unfortunately I had not pieced one of the strips long enough and did not have enough to complete the 6th triangle.  So it had to wait to be finished at home.

I have had the salt and pepper shakers for a long time now, and I usually set them on the kitchen table in the Fall.  They look right at home on my apple topper. Hmmmm...a plate of apple dumplins might look good there too.






For my next one, I decided to see if I could make on with 10 different fabrics and chose Fall fabrics.

The trick for this one, is that when I sew the 10 strips together, the width of the 10 strips must be 10 1/2" to get enough triangles out of the strip set. 

So I cut each strip 1 1/2" wide and that worked out just right.  I really like this one, but with an even number of strips you do not get that center ring made of just one of the fabrics.

 My final method was to use 7 strips, each cut 2".

These were all so easy to make and so much fun.  I have one more in mind, one that has 3 strips cut 3" and 2 strips cut 1 3/4".  I even bought some cute teacup fabric for the 3 wide strips. 



Jasmine quilt hoop

I finally found a source for a replacement hoop for my Jasmine floor frame. I had to order from a quilt shop in Germany, and it arrived today.  Now to finish up the quilting of the Star of Bethlehem quilt.  I only have 4 more border triangles and on corner to do.

Designing an Inner Border

I have been pondering over how to combine my Feathered Star and my embroidered Blocks for the last few days. 

I set the embroidered blocks on point, using the dark blue used in the feathered star to border the block and provide a division between the blocks and the floral print I also used in the feathered star.  I was very pleased with this look.

This block on point measures 20 1/2" unfinished. 


This is where the problem begins - my Feathered Star which is to be the center of the quilt measures 30 1/2" unfinished.  The blocks are to surround the center star.....but when I place two blocks beside the center - they measure 40" compared to the star's 30"

This basically means I need a 5" border all around the star in order to get it to match the block surrounding it.  I feel like a 5" border surrounding the star is too overwhelming and will detract from the star.

I started looking on line for border ideas, and simply could not find anything that looked right to me.  I did see one used quite often which I thought would be perfect - but it would have to be 6", and then I would have to come up with something to get the blocks up to 42", sigh.  I did notice on some of the Feathered Star quilts, folks added a border around the star that matched the background and finally I had an idea!

Using EQ8;  My solution was to add a 2 1/4" border of white around the star, which is nice, as it floats rather than having the star points right up against a contrasting border. 

Then I made a pieced border of the small dark blue squares with the white.  This border finished at 1 1/4" wide with the little dark squares being 3/4".  I used Seminole piecing to make this border row.




I added a 3/4" border on each side of the Seminole pieced border using the same blue paisley fabric used in the star.  I wanted it to be 3/4" to match the dark blue squares.  Also the dark blue border around the on-point blocks is also 3/4" and I felt this consistency would add balance to the design.

Right now the border rows are not sewn together but rather just pinned in place on my design wall, and I will study it again tomorrow to make sure I like this layout.  But I think I have a winner here and am relieved that I finally came up with a solution.  The picture on the right includes the 2 1/4" white border.

I do love to do Seminole piecing and am happy that I have finally used it in a border on a quilt.  This quilt is going to measure 80" square unless I do a little something else to lengthen it.  I prefer rectangular quilts and may add a border of some kind to the top and bottom, but time will tell.  Knowing me, once I get to that point I may be so ready to be done with it that it will just have to be a square quilt.