Festival of Quilts 2017 – episode 2

The second of the four quilts entered into this year’s Festival of Quilts at Birmingham is called ‘Compass and Stars’. It went in to the ‘Traditional’ category because it uses a ‘Lone Star’ type block at the centre and a ‘Single Star’ block (with a solid centre, instead of one divided into four) around the outside. The arrangement of these blocks and borders is my own. I quilted a circle just beyond the points of the central star and quilted in a pointer to North, South, East and West. It is going to a couple who love to travel and who are very interested in looking at the stars in the night sky, including taking wonderful photographs of them. They chose the colours and I’ve enjoyed working with this palette.

And here’s the picture of the whole quilt:

There is gold print in the outside cornerstones and in the background of the yellow star cornerstones, so there’s some subtle twinkling happening on the surface of the quilt. I’m happy with the colour balance across the surface and I’m working now on a pattern that I hope to publish later this year.

I have already done my planning for the next twelve months – for me the new year always starts on 1 September. Because of this, I was able to buy no less than six quilt backs (by that I mean enough yardage to complete the backing for six quilts). For the fabric, I went back to a trader I have sought out before at the Festival of Quilts: ‘The Shuttle’. They can be found at Otley Rd, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD17 7AA.

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Since writing this blog post, I have written a pattern for ‘Compass and Stars’. You can find it here.

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