I belonged for a time to an email group called Quilt en France, which was for francophone quilters — a truly nice group of people from all over. The list mom came up with the idea of having a challenge, in which we would make a prescribed block each month and post the results online for the group to see. The blocks could be in our own choice of fabrics, which made for some wonderful differences in what had started out as the same block for each of us. When I made my blocks, I didn’t bother to redraft the downloaded patterns, so almost all of them turned out to be different sizes — a nightmare when it came time to set them together into a top. Luckily, I took a class from Sharyn Craig at Quilt Camp in the Pines in July, 2004, and she came up with some really imaginative ways to standardize the sizes of the blocks I’d decided to use. Success! (And the source of the quilt’s name.) I set the nine blocks on point and then floated Lemoyne Stars between them. The setting triangles are a Sharyn Craig idea, too, and they give the impression of an inner border. After finishing the top, I machine quilted it in variegated soft blues. The quilt, finished in January, 2005, measures approximately 56″ square.
And here’s a detail of the quilting, which is mainly in free-motion feathered motifs:
The strange thing about this quilt is that I couldn’t ever figure out why I was making it — in other words, I had no plan for the finished project, which is very unusual for me. However, the reason for that became clear as I quilted it. The quilt became a gift for my terrific step-sister! So that’s where it lives now, and I hope she’s getting lots of warm use out of it. 🙂