The Reveal

Last night, I placed the final stitches in the Christmas Lone Star, sighed, went to bed, and then couldn't sleep till after 3 a.m. I don't think there's a connection, but at any rate today's been a slowish day for me--perfect for spending time outside taking pictures of a quilt, and calling that the high point of the day.

I'm not much of a pattern person when it comes to quilts. I like to do my own thing and enjoy the challenge of those "What now?" moments. And there were quite a few of those as this Lone Star came together. What follows is a account of the thought and design process for this quilt. Anyone who looks in at my blog has probably seen some of the steps along the way.

And thank you for being patient with the occasional moaning and whining, as this quilt moved along.

The quilt was born in a Lone Star class I took in May, 2010, a simple and supposedly quick Lone Star with plain fabric insets. I got the inner star diamond sections completed in a weekend and then just didn't know where to go from there.  The setting squares and triangles, which would bring the star to a square shape, looked so huge to me--the setting squares would need to be nearly 22 inches square. I knew I needed to do something else with those setting pieces, but what? I couldn't decide, so the big diamonds, not yet sewn into a star, were folded up and sat in a project box for many months.

I flirted with appliqueing the setting pieces, and went so far as starting one square. This idea provided endless amusement for my quilting friends--they know that applique and I don't mix. They especially laughed at the idea of my tackling so big an applique project.

Well, OK, so they were right... I got this much of one square sewn,

and knew pretty clearly that it wasn't happening for me. And this incomplete piece has now been sitting on top of a 30 inch square ruler, on top of a desk in my bedroom, for a year and a half. Sad lack of follow-through, I know.

Last fall, I got serious about finishing this quilt. I played a good deal with piecing options for those setting squares and triangles in Electric Quilt, finally settling on star and chain blocks. Piecing always feels like the right answer for me.

So far, so good.

Another issue with the original quilt was that I didn't want it to finish at only 72 inches, which was the finished dimension of the original class Lone Star. I wanted a large bed quilt. So instead of piecing big setting squares AND triangles, I made them ALL squares. This would extend the quilt beyond the original 72" dimensions.

At this point, geometry entered into the mix, which is never a happy thing for me. But Judy Martin's wonderful Shining Star Quilts from the 1980s (the very first quilt book I ever bought) came to the rescue. What was needed were eight more big pieced diamonds, just like the diamonds making up that inner Lone Star. These diamond pieces would fit within and circle around the big pieced squares.  

Shining Star Quilts has tables that tell you just how big the pieces need to be for various Lone Star configurations. If you make quilts and do not own this book, you need to buy it immediately, or 25 years ago, which is preferable.

With this new direction, I had to scramble to find more of the original fabrics, and I was able to find all but one. And fortunately, I found a substitute for that one missing fabric that I could live with.

So I made eight more big diamond pieces. And the quilt still wasn't a square. It needed four gigantic corner pieces to complete the square. It seemed like a sunburst was the only way to go. I drew a sunburst design in EQ, took it to an office supply store and had it blown up to huge proportions.

Aaand then I procrastinated on the making of those sunbursts for about three months. Blah, blah, blah--I whined here and on Facebook, to anyone who'd listen. Paper piecing with those long, skinny points was drudgery, but I finally set myself to completing it all and got 'er done. Not fun, but in the end, well worth the time and energy.

Marge West, my long arm quilter, came up with a perfect quilting design. It's called Cotton Candy. Love it, love it. Doesn't it look fabulous on the stripey shirting background fabric?

I'm really happy with the outcome. It's hard to go wrong with these colors! And despite all the crazy biases along the way, the quilt is pretty much square. Happy, happy.

 

Sooo, do I have permission to pitch that wretched piece of partially completed applique??

The Details:

Christmas Lone Star Quilt
Dimensions: approximately 102" square
Fabrics: 100% cotton
Batting: 80/20 cotton/poly
Long arm quilted by Marge West
Quilting design: Cotton Candy

PA and Ts

I'm back from Pennsylvania. It was a great trip. The centerpiece was my high school reunion, which made for three days of get-togethers both organized and impromptu. I'm still smiling.

 

And of course, there were quilt-related activities. I teamed up with one high school friend, a quilter based in North Carolina, for a road trip through the Allegheny National Forest (where there is NO phone service, but there are mountain roads where you get to drive right through the clouds). Destination--the Warren, Pennsylvania area and its quilt shops. We email back and forth about our quiltmaking, but it was a real treat to get to compare notes in person. Yak yak, yak. Good thing the guys stayed home.

In the Warren area, we visited one shop we liked very much, and one where we, to put it delicately, did not feel the love. A proprietor's hovering over us like she expected we might shove bolts of fabric under our shirts? Seemed a bit over the line. We ended up in Bradford, PA at Little Fabric Garden, owned by high school friend Judy Pascale Brown. Judy's shop was crazy busy that day, and it was fun to see everyone enjoying Judy and her shop. Wish I could visit more often.

I got back home Tuesday afternoon, after making the return trip into a two day drive. That was good thinking on my part; it's no fun at all tackling Chicago traffic at the end of a thirteen-hour drive. I broke up the return trip with an overnight stop in Shipshewana, Indiana, a place I'd heard about for years. There was a stellar quilt shop there,

but I found it all a bit unsettling. I'm not entirely comfortable with the concept of turning the Amish, or any religious group for that matter, into a tourist attraction.

Still, despite any reservations on my part, the Amish appeared to be completely on board with everything in Shipshewana; I guess they need to earn a living too.

Anyway, I hit the ground at home and immediately had to turn my attention to the next set of T Blocks, due several days later.

These blocks just can't be rushed. If you give them the right attention, they turn out perfect, but they take a certain amount of time. I grind my teeth as I'm making them, but in the end, they're soooo cute.

Three T Block exchanges completed; SIX more to go. Oy.

Long Way

I'm packing up today for a long drive home to the mountains of McKean County, Pennsylvania. I'll be on the road at the crack of dawn Tuesday and hope to arrive in my home town before dark.

One HECK of a long drive.

But after white-knuckling myself through Chicago and Cleveland, this will be at the payoff at the end:

I'm hoping it will be green there, and a bit cooler. After the parched conditions here in Wisconsin, I'm really hungry to see some greenness.

 

My Featherweight and a mindless machine project will coming along with me, as well as a couple knitting projects for the odd moment. Also a couple books for other odd moments. (Pure by Andrew Miller, and Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.)

Excited to see home for the first time in five years!

Almost Done

 

Nearing the finish on the Lone Star. The machine work on the binding is done. Now I'm traveling the lengthy perimeter slowly, handstitching the binding down. Quiltmaking is certainly not for the impatient, but I guess we already knew that, didn't we?

The quilting looks fabulous and I can't wait to show off the completed quilt.

There won't be much sewing done today. I'm hitting the ground running this morning--prepping for a sizable Pampered Chef party here tonight, which, believe it or not, even will include a couple overnight guests. Anybody need anything? My friend Sue is the greatest Pampered Chef rep ever.

Washington and Back

I spent a week in Washington, DC, visiting my daughter and granddaughter, keeping them company while my son-in-law's work took him halfway around the world, and helping out with a couple of my daughter's projects that needed another set of adult hands and a bit of baby wrangling. Sewing time was non-existent. But that was more than made up for with lots of Baby Cora time. She is seven months old now, animated and busy, and loves to be on the go, which we were. Every day.

 

The highlight of the trip was a venture into the Maryland suburbs for a meetup with the one, the only TONYA RICUCCI--the Unruly Quilter herself. In the flesh!

We had a great Indian lunch and Cora charmed the waiters, who made her a napkin crown.

My time with Tonya was way, way too short. I thought of so many other questions for her later on...  But now we are real-world friends and can get together again for more chat.

I took along the inevitable traveling socks knitting project. I am so sick of knitting this pattern, but one can't argue with success--it's properly mindless for air travel and doctors' offices. And most importantly--this pattern fits me very well. The pattern is the Ann Norling basic adult sock, and I have more than gotten my money's worth from this $3 pattern leaflet purchased when I was a beginning knitter. This is the sock pattern that made sense to me.

 

Socks fit me best when they have ribbing of some sort. Early on, I made one pair of stockinette socks that bagged in a yucky way. Never again. 

This yarn sucked me in when I saw it at Distraction a year or so ago. It makes me think of End-of-Day glass--all sorts of colors thrown in. Wasn't going to buy Any. More. Sock.Yarn , but you know how that goes....

And seriously, I do need to branch out a bit, sock-wise.

I left extreme heat and terrible storms in the DC area and came home to extreme heat and absolutely no rain.

Our grass is brown and crackly, trees are stressed, and we're working to keep the newly-planted ground cover going. So far, so good. But no rain is in sight, at least for another week.