Oxford Star

I am making my version of a quilt my grandmother made. It is the Texas Star quilt -- a six-pointed star with a hexagon center. I've named it Oxford Star because my grandmother was born and lived her whole life in the town of Oxford, Idaho. This is one of the six quilts she gave to my mother.

Here's my grandma's quilt (made probably in the 1950s). 

She machine pieced the stars and hand quilted the quilt. 

I am making my version using Lollies fabric by Jen Kingwell for Moda. The fabrics I chose have eight prints in the width of fabric that all coordinate with each other and that are separated by the gray stripe. So it looks like I've combined multiple fabrics in each star -- but it is kind of a "cheater cloth". 

Some of the blocks use the same fabrics for all six points:

Some blocks use two fabric selections for the star points:

Like my grandmother, I'm also machine piecing the stars. I've completed 25 of the 46 full star blocks. There will also be six half-size blocks. I will be setting the stars with charcoal gray diamonds. 

Lots of Y-seams, but they have been pretty easy to do. I'll be an expert at them by the time this quilt is done.

My blocks are about an inch smaller than my grandma's stars, but that was because I'm using Perfect Patchwork Templates set H by Marti Michell to cut the hexagons, diamonds, and star points.

Over the past year or so this has been a popular quilt made using English Paper Piecing techniques. You can see a fabulous example at Red Pepper Quilts; her quilt is named Daisy Chain. Her finished stars are a bit smaller than mine.

My goal is to have this quilt finished, quilted, and bound by our family reunion at the beginning of July. 

Stash-Buster Quilt

2018 Quilting Goals:

• Goal #1: Make a dent in my huge fabric stash.
• Goal #2: Finish some UFOs (more than I want to admit)
• Goal #3: Quilt more of my "flimsies" (better known as unquilted quilt tops -- I've got 27 of them!)

The checkerboard quilt I recently finished was a UFO, but to finish it I used some of my huge collection of traditional fabrics. Each 10-inch block uses two fat eighths: one neutral and one color. I also use yardage in my stash for the backing. And this quilt was only a flimsy for one day before I put it on the frame and quilted it.

It's not too big -- 50 inches by 60 inches. The perfect size for a throw and the perfect style for a utility quilt.

Here are some more photos:

This is the perfect advanced-beginner quilt who is ready to do some serious chain piecing, as well as strip piecing and sub-cutting into units to be reassembled.

Because the quilt has an old-fashioned look, I decided to wash it to give it a slightly worn feel. It will definitely get used, so hopefully future washings will add to the cozy look and feel.

Year-to-date finishes -- eight quilts

• UFOs: 1 (the checkerboard quilt in this blog post)
• Flimsies into quilts: 3 (see also A Couple Random Quilt Finishes and Pinwheels for Caroline)
• Other quilts (started and finished in 2018): Another Pony Express Quilt and three quilts for magazines that will appear in the July/August issues of McCall's Quilts, Quiltmaker, and Quilting Quickly. (I'll blog about them after they appear in the magazines.)

Not too bad for the first ten weeks of the year!

Another Pony Express Quilt

I thought I’d share the quilt I made using Northcott’s Pony Express fabric. It is for baby Samuel who is due to be born in the next couple of weeks. 

My sister and I did the Northcott Pony Express Block Party shop hop and collected the patterns for the blocks the shops did. But I’m not a fan of sampler quilts and wanted to do something different with the fabrics. 

So I decided to use the fabric to make a baby quilt for a great nephew, Samuel, who is due to be born within a couple weeks. (Yes, that means I finished the baby quilt BEFORE he was born – which doesn’t happen very often for me.)

Samuel has several family history connections to the Pony Express.

Absalom W. Smith is baby Samuel’s fifth great grandfather. His property in Draper, Utah was the Pony Express station Traveler's Rest. Below is the backing fabric, which shows the names of all of the Pony Express stations. You'll notice "Traveler's Rest" in the center of the photo.

On a different ancestral line, two brothers (John and William Fisher) and a brother-in-law (Richard Erastus Egan) of Samuel’s third great grandfather were Pony Express riders.  I think that makes them his fourth great uncles. John and William ("Billy") immigrated from England. I always thought it was interesting that these two young men with British accents were part of the Pony Express.

Here's a close-up that shows the quilting:

Believe it or not, this is the second Pony Express quilt I've made. The other one used the Pony Express fabric designed by Jodi Barrows for the backing, and I designed the front of the quilt to represent Pony Express stations. 

I also designed a cross-stitch design as part of my Family History Sampler to pay homage to John and Billy Fisher. 

Now I just need to get the quilt sent off to Laredo, TX in time for Samuel to be born!