And I'm fighting off the blues. The flu is only reluctantly letting go -- I have work to do -- and would rather be doing something else. (sigh)
If you're going to have the blues, why not have them in quilt form?
Nell Mathern sent me photos of this beauty from Oregon. A lady brought the quilt to her study group to show. The lady thought it might have been been from Revolutionary War era...i.e., 18th century. But it's actually a lovely 19th century piece.
Nell tells me that instead of individual blocks, it's pieced more simply: two sections, two rows.
Section 1: plain square (indigo)
Section 2: square-within-a-square pieced block -- plain muslin square surrounded by indigo triangles
Now alternately join these together. That's Row One.
Row Two is exactly the same -- exactly your Section 1 plain block is muslin, instead of indigo.
Take a look at the closeup below to see how the two different rows fit together. Easy peasy. Remember: Think Rows, not Star Blocks.
(This is called a Variable Star, by the way.)
Add a pieced triangle border, and you've got a beautiful star quilt that is very, very American.
This quilt can use one print plus muslin, like the antique here. Use a bunch of different prints -- keep them to one color, to give the same effect. Or clean out your scrap bin for a rainbow scrappy look. (Watch the row piecing arrangements carefully, if you want to keep the star effect.)
Wish I could be quilting, instead of typing...hopefully soon.
(Thanks, Nell, for sharing!)
2 comments:
Thanks for posting this. What size of square was this antique quilt made with?
I'm not positive...but am guessing the square is probably 3" or 4". Nell told me the finished quilt measured somewhere in the neighborhood of 72" x 90" -- but you've also got that outer triangle border. (And it has to be about 3".) My own preference would be not to make the square any larger -- because then the finished stars start to look a bit large and clunky.
You'd want to do the math, to adjust it for your own needed size. But it should be quite easy to figure, row by row.
Thanks for writing, Dawn!
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