LeMoyne Star Quilt Finished

"The evil that is inside men is at the last a matter for men to control. 

The responsibility and the hope and the promise are in your hands - your hands and 

the hands of the children of all men on this earth.

 The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past.
The hope is always here, always alive,
but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world."

~Susan Cooper in Silver on the Tree

Quilting

LeMoyne String Stars quilt is finally finished. Hooray! Quilting started last week and now the rest is completed. It's bound, washed, dried, and ready to mail. 

LeMoyne Star string quilt

Last week's post showed the quilting on the LeMoyne Stars in the center. The flowers in the background are reprised in the centers of the Sawtooth Stars. Both stars have orange peels, too. 

Sawtooth Star detail

In fact, there are even more orange peels on the light HSTs in the border. After finishing those, the dark HSTs seemed to need some, too. At least it will help hold those patches securely in the wash. If you look carefully, you can see the difference in the quilting from the top to the bottom photo below.

HSTs before and after an extra row of quilting

Using red thread on red fabric means almost nothing shows. However, the FMQ is much more visible on the grey solid that makes part of the back. 

View of quilting on Sawtooth Stars
and HSTs from the back

There wasn't enough of the red calico for the entire back so I pulled all my solids until I found one that went with it. It's not that I'm deliberately trying to not purchase fabric, but I want to use what's on hand first. There's a feeling of peace to see the piles dwindle. Shopping soon.

Back of LeMoyne Star string quilt

Cadet blue, a medium greyed shade from QS, looks good with the red, white, and blue of the front so it became the binding.

LeMoyne Star string quilt folded

My youngest has requested this. How flattering. How fortunate I am that my family enjoys my quilts.

Quilt Specifics

Size: 63" x 83"

Design: Le Moyne Star string blocks

Batting: Mountain Mist Cream Rose cotton

Thread: Red, white, and blue Superior 50/3 cotton thread

Quilting: SID and FMQ

Approximate yardage: 13 yds

Previous posts:

1. Making string LeMoyne Stars

2. Pulling the first border from the Parts Department

3. Making fabric for the Sawtooth Stars

4. Starting quilting

Reading

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates finally came in... just in time for my book club discussion. In fact, I hadn't finished it by the meeting so the meaning of conduction wasn't clear in my mind. After reading the final pages, I no not see it as "magical realism" or "fantasy." To me, it shows that Blacks have the strength and intelligence to rescue themselves while it also tells of the rejuvenation of Black history by highlighting the tremendous effort to keep it alive. While Hiram struggles to exhaustion to bring forth the story, it was his personal choice requiring communal efforts from the people he was conducting. Juxtapose this with his original escape, orchestrated by {mainly white} others who tortured him {or allowed him to be tortured} in the attempt to turn his talents  - not to their use exactly - but to their direction, to times of their choosing rather than his. 

The best review is by NPR here. An excellent book, well-researched, well written. I enjoy his writing, not least because of the different point of view. In fact, his preface quotes Frederick Douglass: "My part has been to tell the story of the slave. The story of the master never wanted for narrators." 

V-O-T-E and Complete the Census. 

Please. Don't let anyone rob you of your voice. America is made of ALL of us working together even when we disagree.

Enjoy the day, Ann

LeMoyne Star Quilting Progress

You do not write your life with words. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. 

It is only important what you do.

~ Patrick Ness in A Monster Calls

Quilting

I haven't moved quickly but at least the quilt is in progress. I wanted a quilting design that honored the piecing, didn't have many starts and stops {burying threads takes so much time}, and was less densely quilted than usual for me. My friend, Marty, spent an hour with me on the phone discussing how to quilt this. We used FaceTime to see exactly what we were talking about. Isn't technology great!

We decided on orange peels in the star points and a modified flower in each background segment. It turned out better than expected. The quilting really shows, which is not always the case on printed fabrics.

FMQ arcs and flowers on LeMoyne Star

The small sawtooth stars on the border will reprise those flowers and orange peels. Here's a sketch on transparent overlay. One of the nice things is that this doesn't have to be marked on the quilt.

Sketched FMQ ideas for Sawtooth Star blocks

I'm still weighing options for the outer border. 

Gardening

I pulled my first watermelon radish. These lovely specimens look a bit like watermelons with red centers surrounded by white and a green outer rim. For the last few years, I find them in restaurant salads but have only found the root in the grocery twice. They are very large radishes, about three inches, so it takes at least sixty days for them to grow. This is day 75 but the one I pulled was only about an inch and a half. And the outer layer was green at the top but the part under the soil was still white. But I shaved narrow slices off it with a potato peeler and enjoyed some on my salads this week. Who know how long the others will take to get to full size. On the other hand, the beans and squash are coming in steadily.

New Blogger

So many people are having trouble with the new Blogger that I wanted to share a trick I've used for a while. When starting a new post, I first write x's like this:

xx

xx

xx

xx

Then I move the cursor to the lines between the xx's and add photos. In the example above, I can add three photos. I've found I must have some xx's {my temporary substitute for type} above and below each photo. If I want to add more photos, I first add more xx's to the "end" so there's always text after each photo. Does that make sense? Finally, I move the cursor to the xx's, type my text, and only then backspace out the xx's. Otherwise the text seems to become part of the captions and does those other weird things. I hope this helps.

 

Enjoy the day, Ann

Using the Parts Department to Complete a Quilt Top

"Voting versus protest; politics and participation versus civil disobedience and direct action. 

This is not an either/or; this is a both/and. 

To bring about real change we both have to highlight a problem 

and make people in power uncomfortable, 

but we also have to translate that into practical solutions and laws that can be implemented 

and we can monitor and make sure we're following up on.

~President Barak Obama

Quilting

Sashing was the next decision. I laid out four choices but secretly thought one of the darkest {vertical} would work best. Instead, that dark grey on the left is it.

Sashing possibilities

The sashing is printed with small dots of "non-colors" on dark grey. You know, those nothing neutrals - soft yellow, green, etc. So I looked for fabrics in those values for the posts and immediately like this odd yellow print.

Sashing sewn

Now it's larger than baby quilt size but still doesn't look finished. Borders would solve that; however, I want them to be composed of smaller blocks instead of lengths of single fabric. There's already a small pile of HSTs, many already sewn, that could be the first round. The top is currently 51 inches. Divisible by three. Easy. Seventeen on each side.

LeMoyne string stars with single border of HSTs

But it needs still more. I don't want another round of the same size nor a "matched block of 1.5 or 6 inches. Too planned. A simple spreadsheet came to mind as a quick way to find a good working measurement.

The current size of the top at the top is divided by the number of blocks down the first column to calculate a finished block size. Between 1.5 and 3 inches is what I want and look, 2.375" fits.

This round took a bit longer because of all the trimming. There are 17 large HST and 24 small HSTs {plus the corner blocks.} Since they have no factors in common {just a bit of math} they don't line up until the edge is reached. I like the way that looks. More random.

LeMoyne Star with a double border of HSTs

Sixty-one inches is an in between size - too large for a baby quilt and a bit small for a lap quilt. I prefer quilts to cover me from toes to chin. One way to lengthen the top might be to add another border on one or two sides. Pulling some fabrics I was surprised how few lights are left... at least lights in colors that work. Neither of these seems right. Both are a noticeably different style of print.

Two possible fabrics for another border

Obviously this needs more work. And fortunately I have time... next week. So the title of the post is a lie. The top is not complete.

Voting

Just 147 days until the US election but you must be registered in order to vote. Please do it now.

Enjoy the day, Ann

LeMoyne Stars

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.'
~ C. S. Lewis

Quilting

With the chunks are out of the way, I'm ready to attack the scrap bag. Still enthused with diamonds, I cut newspaper foundation into five-inch wide diamonds to make LeMoyne Stars. To add some cohesion each started with one common fabric at the widest point of the diamond.

The idea to make a ring inside the star came from several sources. First, traditional Lone Stars {you recall how the tiny diamonds make a circle of each round.} Since this would be strings rather than diamonds, my mind jumped to those beautiful ringed spiderwebs. But even if I was crazy enough to line up all these strings. there wasn't enough of all the fabrics for that idea to work. I vaguely recalled  Gwen Marston's Amish String Star from her book, Liberated String Quilts and pulled it out for another look. It gave me the brilliant idea of making that circle from striped fabric but there wasn't enough in a color that worked. So I pulled out all my fabrics for a closer look. There was just enough of a pink fabric with double rows of dots. {All of this is just to demonstrate how ideas bloom and how constraints guide our choices.}

Lighter fabrics on one side and darker fabrics on the other; most of them are red or blue dark points. Yes, I cherry-picked the strings but as the preferred colors ran out, greens and purples and even brown was added. The inside is whatever light string was available.

LeMoyne Stars in progress

Problems arose with the background(s). After repeated measurements and calculations the four backgrounds require twenty inches for each pair of colors. Just over half a yard. And there's the rub. The print at the top of each of these photos {Background 1} works beautifully for the red stars but only okay for the blues. After pulling more choices, the flamingos looked best here but... there's not enough to make two backgrounds. And the other fabrics won't even finish one background. So all four will have Background 1.

Background fabric possibilities

String diamonds take a while to construct. This is a week's work. I thought I'd be further along.

Enjoy the day, Ann