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Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Jane's Ohio Star

I love working on 8-point stars. Many people call them Ohio Star or LeMoyne Star, or even Texas Star. How ever you acknowledge them, they sure make a striking shape. Of course, being a buckeye girl, I love calling them OHIO stars!

This quilt, from my friend Jane, takes this very traditional quilting element and gives it a bit of a modern edge. Traditional quilts might have been more likely to have several stars replicated in a grid. This quilt has a single star that's a huge focal point - and it consists of dozens of diamond shapes. Lots of complex angles and points to fuss with when piecing. I'm sure glad it wasn't me!

Jane gave me full license to play with all the "negative space" surrounding the star. We tossed around some ideas and worked out a loose plan, and then I got to go wherever the quilt led me.

Uncharacteristic for me, I did a fair bit of marking before I even loaded the quilt on my frame. I drew all the squares/parallel lines and triangles with water-soluble markers. I wanted to make sure everything was even and straight from the get-go. The blessing and curse about quilting on (basically) solid-colored fabrics is that you see EVERYTHING. If you don't plan very intentionally, any mistakes or sloppiness will very likely draw attention. But if done well, it can be a really lovely effect.

All my quilting is free-motion, hand-guided on an APQS longarm quilting machine.






















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