Pointless Lone Star
Measurements: 86 x 86 inches
Special techniques: No set in seams. Now that's special! Strip piecing.
Quilted by: Maggi Honeyman of Texas
Best category: Bed quilt
Pattern: Shades of Grey by Sarah Fielke from the August/September 2011 Quilters Newsletter magazine. Pattern can also be found here at Sarah's website.
My husband asked me to make a quilt for the wedding of one of his friend's. I thought I'd use the couple's favorite colors as a starting point, and then I found out they were purple (him) and pink (her). Hmmmm. I happened to see the pattern for this in Quilter's Magazine. It looked like it could be a fast and simple quilt with only four really huge blocks (36 inches square) and no set in seams, and I'd substitute a plain border for the pieced one.
I pulled some pink and purple prints, and used them to choose the fabrics for the blocks. The original pattern duplicated fabrics and placement, but I didn't have that kind of yardage in my stash, and I wanted a more scrappy look so I made each block different. I was able to use fat quarters for the two rounds of inner diamonds, although I had to piece a couple scraps together to make a couple of the diamonds. When I was selecting fabrics, I needed some math skills to figure out which ones I had enough of for each round of diamonds, and that dictated some of the fabric placement too. I used a wide variety of fabrics from batiks, wovens, plaids, stripes and dots to novelty fabrics.
When I finished the blocks, I decided I didn't like the prints I had planned for the borders so they went on the back, and I went to the quilt shop. The navy and teal print I found has a pattern of birds and hearts on it, perfect in color and motif for this wedding quilt.
Maggi Honeyman did a wonderful job on her longarm. The setting triangles, which needed to read solid to balance the busyness of the star fabrics and give the eye a place to rest, seemed a little too boring compared to the rest of the quilt. Maggi fixed that by quilting special designs in those spaces.
This was a fairly easy pattern, but probably not a beginner one. Especially if you switch it up like I did and have to recalculate yardage. For tips on making these kinds of points match, check out this post.
I wanted to share this because I like seeing different takes on the same pattern. Seeing a quilt done in different colors and fabrics can make you fall in love with a pattern you hadn't given a second glance at before.