Red and white quilt: stars with checkerboard
94 by 74 inches
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The fabric used in the light squares of the star is from my mother's sewing in the 1960s
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One of my goals in planning a quilt is to have all seams nest with no twisting. But sometimes that doesn't work out and I am ok with that--I call the flipped seams "twisted sisters". This quilt mostly nests flat, but there are a number of twisted sisters. Maybe with extra planning I could have eliminated them, but I did not take the time to figure that out.
When Joanna S. Rose had her fabulous 2011 red and white
Infinite Variety quilt show at the Armory, I thought I would like to make a red and white quilt every year. The only large one I have made is my
Red Cross (pieced before her show).
Well over a decade later, I finally decided it was time for a red and white quilt.
And in the process, cut parts for two other red and white quilts while I had the reds at the cutting table. Those will be at the ready for pick up sewing.
I had quite a few reds on my shelves, friends gave me more from their shelves, and I did a bit of shopping. There are about 60 different reds used for the 48 stars and hundreds of different reds in the checkerboards.
The white is Kona Snow. I went through 3 yards pretty quickly so I bought a 9 yard bolt for this and future projects.
I first intended to make different sizes of stars, but fell in love with the 8 inch ones. They show off the great prints. I had just made checkerboard for the most recent
alphabet quilt and decided to scale down to 1 inch finished checkerboard.
This used up a great number of 1 1/2 inch red squares from my bins. I also cut down many from the 1 1/2 by 2 1/2 inch rectangles bin to add to the variety.
I intended a triangle boarder but it was too much. Instead I added an extra row of checkerboard to the outside and ended with a 4 1/2 inch cut white border.
I plan to bind with white.
I did not plan ahead how many 4-patches I would need for the checkerboard. I just kept making 4-patches, sewing them into sashings, then making more. Each time I would make a pile thinking this would surely be enough, and it wasn't. Toward the end I was anticipating having a huge pile of leftovers and making something else with them. When I made the final sashing, ONE 4-patch remained unused.
No real directions, but the basics are:
8 inch finished stars
1 inch finished checkerboard
4 1/2 inch cut plain borders
I found it best to sew with the star on top at every step of assembly.
My design--use at your pleasure.
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| Had just enough of that fabulous floral for the center and a bit remaining that went into the checkerboard |
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Mustard!
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| That jump rope fabric of Latifah Safir is one of my favorites. Because it leans orange, I made several other red-oranges to put near it to help it blend in. |
