Well this has been a long time coming. I put it up in the loft a couple of years ago meaning to finish it. It began as an idea for our bedroom which is cream and dark red. I love red and had seen other ohio star quilts and thought this would be it.
I really enjoyed choosing fabrics and went for those I loved, fat quarters and bits and pieces from other projects as well as a large piece from a fabric shop in Berwick Upon Tweed. I used a patchwork web site to design my quilt, the name of which is long forgotten but it really wasn't hard. This site was really about quantities of fabric which I completely ignored. Anyway I needed to make 20 12" blocks with an added inch and a half border of cream to each block.
Once made and having quilted a bed size quilt on my machine before I decided that I would 'quilt as I go' this time so I sewed four blocks together and then made a quilt sandwich with 'quilter's dream' wadding and backing fabric. I made myself a leaf shaped stencil and drew on quilting lines, they were gently curved as a contrast to the straight lines of the blocks. Quilting was minimal as I don't like the stiffness you get from close quilting. The quilting is hard to see in the main picture.
I machine stitched the top pieces together, trimmed the wadding, hand stitched the wadding and then hand stitched the backing. I actually really enjoyed the hand sewing part of this quilt. I love that we can make quilts really quickly with our sewing machines but for me that detracts from the hand made essence of quilts. The hand made quality that comes with fabric choices, personal touches and hand work, all things that make a quilt unique.
This is just a piece of the backing which is patchy with left over pieces of fabric from the stars. I will post a picture of the back in a later post as the quilt is in the washing machine and I didn't take a photo.
I love this quilt, it makes me happy when I look at it, I'm glad I made it.
