Friday 7 August 2009

Miniature Lone Star


I first saw a Lone Star quilt shortly after I started quilting. I knew that it was more complex than I felt capable of at the time, having only been quilting for a few months. But I loved the design and decided then and there that I would have one for my bed. From then on, I looked at every Lone Star quilt that I saw, imagining it in my bedroom. Would those colours work? Was the size right?


Then one day I saw a variation on the pattern, that added a second round of diamonds outside the main lone star pattern. To me, this addition made the pattern even more interesting, and I was once again determined to do this. But the thought of tackling a project that large (for a king size bed) was still daunting. Then, I learned about miniature quilts. The perfect solution - I could do a smaller version of the pattern, to make sure I could do it and test out the colour scheme I wanted.

One out of 2 isn't bad - rather than my planned colour scheme (blue), I selected some green fabric from my stash and went to work. 1/2" diamonds seemed like a good choice - I figured I'd create it and figure out how big it ended up being, rather than trying to figure out how to size the lone star pattern up-front.

Working in miniature turned out to be more difficult than expected. The initial strips were easy to sew. But pieces those into the diamonds was a challenge. Nothing would stay lined up, and there wasn't enough fabric to hold onto while trying to stitch the pieces together. I ended up using freezer paper to stabilize the pieces while stitching them together. That worked like a charm, and the quilt went together smoothly after that.

The quilting on this quilt was my first attempt at free-motion quilting on my machine. The off-white blocks and border are quilted with a feather pattern, and the diamonds are all outline quilted. This quilt is about 24" square.

See other creations, and get instructions for lots of different projects in the "Make it from scratch" carnival.

5 comments:

  1. This looks awesome! 1/4" diamonds you say? That is soooo tiny and your work is beautiful! The points are so neat - no one would believe it is a mini if they just saw the center. The binding and the way it is hung does give the size away! What sort of seam allowance did you use? 1/4" would have made it too bulky.
    It is a fantastic piece of work. I can't decide if I like the green mini or the queen sized blue version better! :)

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  2. The seam allowance is about 1/8", if I recall correctly. The diamonds are actually 1/2", now that I take another look at it. Guess I should fix that.

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  3. I remember when you showed this to me, I just about fell over caught between amazement that you'd done this and wondering which of your marbles fell loose to make you attempt this! Seriously, this was an amazing piece of work and the full sized one is even more beautiful.

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  4. One suggestion - if you can modify the picture - take another one with a ruler in the picture - then you'll really blow people away with what you did here on the green one.

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  5. Wow, that is a gorgeous miniature!

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