Celebration

WooHoo! This one’s done!

People often ask, “how long does it take to make a quilt?”  There’s usually no way to answer that…but this one was 20 years in the making.  I pieced the blocks long ago, pulled them out in February and presented the quilt as a gift early in May.

I learned a lot about quilting at the turn of the century watching the then HGTV series, Simply Quilts.  On that show, a line of fabric designed by Susan Branch was featured with this pieced combination of Lemoyne Stars and half-Lemoyne stars.  I was entranced.  Entranced by Susan Branch’s art work, by the fabric, by the star pattern.

I bought the line of fabric in fat quarters, downloaded the show’s pattern, and began piecing stars by hand.  They were lovely.  I enjoyed many hours of piecing the stars while visiting with family and friends.  

Then they sat in a box for years.  Many years.  I had memories of laying out the blocks on the design wall, labeling their position in a spreadsheet array, and putting them aside.  I thought it was a failed project because the white background fabric was so thin that it wouldn’t work to assemble them.

I opened the box earlier this year to learn that I was wrong.  I had put them away because the solid white blocks were the wrong size to connect with the stars.  Whether I read the directions incorrectly, pieced incorrectly, or whether there was an error in the instructions, I don’t know.  Fortunately the solid blocks were too big, not too small.  All the stars were consistently the same size, so I just trimmed the solid blocks to fit and stitched them together.  They went together perfectly.  Well, there are a few less than perfect points…but let’s chalk that up to an inexperienced piecer stitching them by hand.

Twenty years of experience gave me the knowledge I needed to make the blocks work.

As I thought about a quilting design, the obvious was to quilt feathered wreaths in the open spaces.  That seemed too pretentious to me for these fun fabrics.  I wanted a curvy design to contrast with the pointy stars.  So I stitched an overall vine in green thread, then echoed it in a fine white thread.  I like the result.

I called this one Celebration.  It was given to a family member who had reason to celebrate…but I was celebrating the completion of a big UFO!  I considered calling it WooHoo, but went with the more discreet name.

The quilt measures 80” square.  I’m pleased with the green vines on back and front, echoed with a finer thread in white.  The green is a 30wt cotton thread.  The white is a 100 wt silk.

The on-location photos were taken at a rescued country store, Mildred’s, in Houston County.