Here in the Pacific Northwest when the forest gets dense and you lose your horizontal bearing, sometimes you need to look up and follow the stars!
In quilting jargon, when the going gets tough, the tough quilt stars!
The pattern for this large-sized queen quilt was inspired by a small fragment of an antique quilt, and came from the February 2007 issue of McCall's Quilting. The unique setting highlights the star points and adds interest with pieced sashing posts. Using the cream print as the outer strips of the pieced sashing makes the star points in the blocks appear to float in the setting.
I pieced and then longarm machine-quilted it, using two techniques; computer assisted and hand-guided. The only hand-guided quilting was continuous; utilizing serpentine lines within the sashing strip seams, and SID around each sashing post as I travelled across the quilt to serpentine each sashing strip. All computer-assisted patterns were Lady of the Lake, from Donna Kleinke of One Song Needle Arts.
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| Quilting the borders |
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| Border design close up |
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| Border design as seen with triangle design finished |
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| Sashing square quilting detail |
Our ten-year old granddaughter was visiting last summer, and among other fun things, I taught her how to quilt. (The arm bandage came from a back handspring, not her first attempt at quilting! And yes, she finished her quilt and took it home within one week - it helps when grandma has a longarm ...). It just so happened I was finishing up my Northwoods Star Quilt when she was here. As I was hand-sewing the binding to the back of my quilt one evening, I was contemplating what to name it. She was watching, enthralled with the whole process, so I asked her to help me with its name.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"I think it looks like it came from the country, or from in the woods." She said. "So, you should give it a name that makes you think of a forest, or something."
Such wisdom!
"Well, we live in the Northwest, so how about 'Northwest...something'?"
"How about 'Northwoods'?" she countered.
"Northwoods Star Crossing!!" I finalized, since 'Star Crossing' is the name of the original pattern.
And there you have it :).
