The Feather Edged Star

For many years every spare moment I had was spent quilting, especially when my 3 older children were small. Their playground was under the quilts... which were stitched into a frame and perched on 4 chairs ... one under each corner... it looked like stained glass windows when they looked up from under it... with the light pouring through... it was magical...

The ends of my fingers looked like pincushions ... tough and calloused ... Several times I even sewed my finger to the underneath of the quilt because I never felt the needle... during that time period I made many, many quilts... after I unattached my finger, of course...

The name Feather Edged Star comes from the small triangles that surround the star... This is a traditional pieced quilt where all the pieces are cut out with the grain and individually stitched together to form the top...then a layer of batting is sandwiched in the middle with a plain sheet of broadcloth attached to the back... I liked the strong contrast of the red and cream/white colors together...

This quilt is for a queen sized bed... usually I would have put much more quilting and piecework into the star section but this time I decided to do it differently...

Each large Star block is 24" sq......  I ran the background quilting diagonally about 1/2" apart.... tiny stitches holding all 3 layers together, about 8-10 per inch...

I love the way quilts feel ... the rise and fall of puffed portions against the quilted down areas... if I was blind I could still know the beauty of one...






I quilted a Feather Rope Design along the outside border that goes around the quilt.... one of my favourite borders ...

Transferring the pattern was the tricky part... I used to awkwardly hold it against a window pane so I could see... to trace it onto the fabric .. and it worked pretty well... a handy vertical "light table"... one I don't need to put away... this was done before the layers were assembled...





This particular quilt has a story of survival... It is really a wonder it even exists at all... the pieced top came through the fire that destroyed our house in the early 1990's (which we had built ourselves and worked on for 15 years) ... as far as we could figure out, burning coals somehow escaped by way of the door or draft  of the wood furnace...

... it smoldered for days..... then the fire was eventually over... the brick chimney, stark, solitary and upright,  stood alone in the middle of the burnt-out foundation ... didn't help that we had 8 cord of our winter firewood in the basement....

...we scraped through the charred rubble to see if anything could be salvaged...

Low and behold out of the bottom of an old burnt cabinet... that was only partly saved because part of a wall had fallen on it .... the bottom drawer where the quilt top had been stored... miraculously... had not burned to a cinder...

The Quilt Top had been packed so tightly with some other fabrics ... that they acted like insulation and protected it ... I couldn't believe it! ... a raging fire had destroyed our entire house and all its contents (and our sweet little dog, Teddy, a Keeshond and our beautiful cat, Chantzee) but this fragile piece of fabric survived...

The smell of the fire was very strong within the fabric... I thought there was no hope of extracting the stench... but after much soaking, rinsing, washing... and more soaking, washing, rinsing... and airing.... repeatedly... it freshened ... mostly...

...and with that it gave me hope that things would be better... I quilted it two years later...

and sleep under it most every night...