All my Friends are Stars

Yesterday, Nikko and I walked to the park with my quilt and a step ladder and digital camera. thinking of taking a picture of my friendship quilt ... well, that is what I was thinking of ... Nikko? she was probably thinking about meeting cats and little yappy dogs and watching out for scary kids kicking balls.

The park fence was too narrow in the sunny spot and had too many tree shadows in the other places so we walked another block to the fence around the tanks at the apartment buildings.

When I first began my quilt diary, I trimmed all the pictures from prints made from negatives. I have made many quilts with no pictures at all, let alone digital ones, and many pictures I did have were lost when my last computer died. It's a good thing I didn't wait until today, because no quilt could ever hang in the blasting winds we are getting now.

This is the finished friendship quilt. There are five other blocks made by quilt group friends who are still in Tokyo but have left the group. There was some small problem about size of the finished blocks but putting a black sashing on each one solved that.  For the border, I put the feature fabric as part of a half-square triangle and hunted down bits of color that the other quilters had featured.

For the center and inner star points, I used the fabric I had used in my own basket block, changing the star point fabric in several places.

I drafted a large scalloped pattern for quilting the setting fabric.

The backing is all feature fabric and I turned it to the front for binding.

Since 1998, when I finished it, this quilt has spent most of its life on the guestroom bed.  It is 82 inches (208 cm.) square.


I love the idea of a friendship quilt. When my #4 daughter was working at the American School, we made several friendship quilts for teachers that were having babies. Each teacher contributed a patch or a hand-print ... depending on what we were making ... and my daughter and I put them all together,
I hope they provided good memories for those new mothers.

Now that I have reached my 300th post, I am thinking of friendship in terms of my blogging friends. In just a few years I have made friends throughout the blog world that I think about often.. It warms my heart to read their comments and I love getting to know them through their blog posts.

I was thinking it would be fun to make a "follower's" quilt. If I made a block to represent you, what would it be? Well, Irene's might have hexies ... beautiful fussy-cut hexies ... or a cute house. Maybe Tanya's would have cats or Janet's, snowflakes, or Cynthia's, sashiko stitches. And there would be a few with embroidery stitching and a touch of indigo dying... Oh wouldn't that be fun! Mine sure would be an Ohio star.

How about it? What could I make to represent you? Favorite colors? Favorite seasons? Favorite topics? Favorite block designs?
I am going to keep notes in my blog journal with your suggestions.

Now back to the + and x quilt. Almost finished quilting the second side. Woo Hoo, I'm on a quilting roll!!