Patriotic Lone Stars: Part I

In honor of the upcoming holiday, I thought I'd share these red-white-and-blue Lone Star quilts I made.  Although I'm not usually a traditional quilter, I am actually quite fond of the lone star pattern.  I was initially scared off by all of the diamond shapes, which I always assumed had to be pieced using set-in Y-seams.  As it turns out, there are easier ways, but I'll come to that tomorrow.

Three or four years ago (in our very early quilting days), my mom came across a pattern somewhere for a "wannabe" lone star wall-hanging made of half-square triangles.  Instead of having diamonds, the lone star is made up of little parallelograms which are much easier to piece and approximate diamonds from afar.

We had a lot of fun laying out the half square triangles on the top bunk-bed at my mom's house- It was tricky to make sure we were sewing the right sides together-one wrong seam and the pattern was totally awry.  I've always loved that pinwheel print in the quilt border, I wish I had some more of it; alas all that's left is a few tiny pieces in the scrap bin.  Anyway, the main lesson I learned from this quilt was to watch my print choices; the wretchedness of those mis-matched center stripes still gives me a headache.  Alas, making the easy version didn't assuage my desire to make a real lone star.  This quilt hangs now in my quilting room where it mainly serves as a pin-board on which I hang other works-in-progress.

Sorry for the work gloves and pile of fabric in the picture.  I'd take a new photo, but three other projects are currently pinned haphazardly on top of this one.  As an aside, the blog name "I'm working on a project" is, as Professor Dumbledore once said, "optimistic to the point of foolishness."  I've never worked a single project in my whole life and in common with most quilters, the UFOs in my quilting room outnumber the finished work.

Back on the subject, in 2009 I decided to make a quilt for Mike; when I asked him what kind of quilt he wanted he pointed at the wannabe lone star and said he wanted one like this one.  I figured it would be the perfect occasion to try out the real thing.  So- tomorrow, the real lone star.