Lone Star Rising Quilt

I’m delighted to be sharing my Lone Star Rising quilt with you today!
I made this quilt at the beginning of the year for Quilt Now magazine. It is the first Lone Star I have made and I totally fell in love with the pattern. I can see a few more Lone Star quilts in my future!

There are quite a few off-centre Lone Stars around but most of them knock off just one or two of the arms. I decided to knock off 4 arms and place my star right up in the top left corner. When I put it there it reminded me of the way I used to draw a sun when I was tiny. So then it became a rising sun, hence the title Lone Star Rising.

I was very happy to see that it made the cover too, albeit as an inset (that main cover quilt totally deserves the limelight!).

There was quite a bit of negative space on this quilt which is good for showing off some fancy FMQ. I decided to go for an overall design and not get too fancy, so I quilted 4 different leaves in a trailing pattern. I love doing leaves so this was easy but lots of fun and I think a bit different. Nominally they are holly, oak, beech and sycamore, but don’t look too closely, they are not botanically correct!

I hope you get a chance to see the magazine and the way I have tackled the piecing. I think I came up with a neat, quick, strip-piecing method that takes the fiddles out of this design. The size of the diamonds means it grows pretty quickly too.

This last shot is taken against our new mini barn that my husband built. It’s the perfect backdrop to photograph my quilts!
You can see more shots of the barn (during and after construction) and his design ideas for Tiny Houses here.