I have this picture as my header of my blog but I realized I've never told the story behind this quilt.
Five years ago our son was expecting his first child; Reed and Angela lived in Idaho but were Texans through and through so I decided to make them a quilt for the baby. I gave myself some guidelines;
- I HAD to use fabric that I had and hopefully use just scraps since they were taking over the sewing area.
- It would be nice if it was an I-Spy Quilt also.
- It had to be very washable and usable so it could be dragged around and not come apart.
After coming up with the flag idea I started the relaxed log cabins, using fabric strictly from my scrap bins but using as many 'I spy' kinds as I could find. While sewing I puzzled over the star portion; I knew that an appliqued star would have vulnerable areas where there would be hardly any fabric turned under so I thought I'd piece the star into the background (I'd recently read a book on piecing difficult shapes.) I did a sample and realized that the pieced star also had vulnerable spots that would likely fray with hundreds of washings so I couldn't use that method. I came up with a paper pieced relaxed log cabin block that gives the star 1/4 inch seams at the vulnerable spots that had eliminated the other 2 methods. This would holdup to many washings.
Then I quilted it with Texas designs; the Alamo, bluebonnets, an oil rig, and the word TEXAS as used in the Texas centennial. It was fabulous so I showed it to the quilt shop owner and she asked me to write the pattern to sell. So I did. I made the one pictured above for a model for the shop and eliminated the Texas quilt designs because some of them were copyrighted and gave the Texas themed one to my first grandchild; Tyler.
It has never been washed; It was too gorgeous and has always been on a wall. I could have appliqued the star and it would have been fine. Oh well, I made him a different quilt, one that was easy, a rail fence, and could clearly be used by the child.
I still sell the pattern to the local quilt shop. That shop is Quakertown Quilts. Here's a link to the
shop.
*Quakertown Quilts no longer exists if you want the pattern e-mail me at lauriekstone@gmail.com
I also quilted the border of this Halloween quilt that I did years ago. I made the pattern and sold it as a Christmas Quilt (see bottom of right side bar). The shop wanted it with their Halloween postcards so they gave me all the fabric to sew it up then it hung in their shop for a couple years but since they no longer carry the postcards they no longer need the quilt. I had sewn the binding on my machine and it looked bad, so I took it off and redid it. Using the same binding I ended up needing 2.25" less. So either the quilting pulled the quilt in a lot or I did a very poor job the first time round. Here it is before the quilting and binding repair.
Here it is as it looks now. (If I can get my husband to take another, better picture I'll replace this one tomorrow.)
If you want to know what the OPAM is all about click on the button on my side bar.
