Label Type
Artist CommentaryLabel
Title- Star Struck (named by my Mother-in-law Jean See)
Design- 12,256 1” hexagons are pieced together forming a star in the center with each star point a different color of the rainbow. This water color rainbow repeats in the background. Around the entire star pattern is a border where the background colors transition through the colors of the rainbow each with an appliquéd circle in the complimentary color to the background fabric. I wanted the hexagon quilt to not read like a tradition Grandmother’s Flower pattern, but some Grandmother’s Flowers were interjected into the quilt, some subtle and others more bold. Appliquéd circles and ovals in the shape of a flower in the complementary color to the background are also randomly placed throughout the quilt. Beads are used for the stamens of the flowers and to connect some of the smaller circles in a wavy pattern that loosely forms another star. There is a total of 63 large appliquéd circles, 633 small circles and 378 ovals. This is my first two sided quilt. The back has a trio of woven appliquéd bias strips and embroidered lines in a triangular pattern. The inspiration for this came from Sieglande Schoen Smith’s quilt ‘Mother Earth and Her Children’ in which she used embroidery thread to cover her quilting stitches on the back. She did this because there where large sections of appliqué that were not quilted. I added the appliquéd bias strips and multiple colors to create another pattern and thus a reversible quilt. I had used a light backing fabric and multiple colors of thread for quilting and the appliqué covered the thread. I carried the design over a hanging sleeve and stitched three smaller labels into the design of the quilt.
Made for- Myself with the intention to show it in the hopes that this would be the one that would win a major Best of Show and hopefully be honored in a museum.
Date Completed- May 1, 2011
City- Ashburn, VA
Entirely hand pieced, quilted, embroidered and beaded.
Time to Complete- 3.5 years (2 yrs 8 months to piece and appliqué the top, 3.5 months to quilt, 4 months to appliqué bias strips on back, 1.5 months to bind and embroider the back and 2 weeks to embroider and bead the front and make the labels)
Size- 91” wide by 80” tall
Materials- 100% cotton fabric, over 21 skeins of pearl cotton and regular embroider floss, 100% cotton and silk thread, glass and plastic seed beads, 50% Bamboo-50% Organic Cotton batting was used except for approximately 8” on the left side of the quilt, Hobbs Heirloom Premium 80% Cotton-20% Polyester batting was used)
Cost of Materials- $365.05 plus numerous fabric from my stash and friends
How did you come up with the design for Star Struck?
The design evolved with time. Initially I was lying in bed thinking about making a quilt that would be very unique. I had made a traditional hexagon quilt before in a Mary Washington pattern by hand and even though it took forever, I loved the handwork which seems like less and less people are doing. I wanted to design a quilt with hexagons that didn’t look like a traditional hexagon quilt. When I first learned English paper piecing, someone in my guild was making a charm quilt in an apple core design all in blue. It was beautiful, but was going to take forever to have an entire quilt in one color with no repeats. That is when I decided to add more colors, like the colors in a rainbow. My stepfather had just died two weeks before and the family had seen many beautiful rainbows that had meant a lot to us and I believe that is why I was thinking in rainbow colors. I loved the Texas star quilts, but have never made one and saw how I could lay the points of a six pointed star together in a water color fashion with the colors transitioning form R to O-Y-G-B and P. The Texas star quilts have some areas between the points of the stars which usually focus on the beautiful quilting stitches. I decided to do something that I had never seen before which was to appliqué circles and ovals in the shape of flowers to mock the Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern. (about a year after starting my quilt, I did see a quilt that appliquéd circles onto hexagon pieces in their design and realized that I was not the first one to discover this technique). By now I had jumped up out of bed several times to jot down drawings about my new quilt and for a long time this was the only part of the design.
The next thing that helped me design my quilt happened where I work as a dental hygienist. One of my patient’s Mother’s had become to old to quilt and had given me an enormous collection of fabric. One medley of fabrics was a series of pastels which I though would be a great transition from my colors to the lighter areas that focused my appliqué.
Five months into my project, I had gone to the Mid Atlantic show in Hampton, VA and found a beautiful pebbly fabric with a black background and all of the ROYGBP colors. I decided to arrange hexagons out of this fabric around my star so the fabric looked like the colors changed just like in the center star. That fabric led me to my most insane part of the design which was to take one of my largest outer star borders and have all the background colors transition through ROYGBP with contrasting appliquéd circles over top.
The background mirrors the center star in a water color technique with “hidden” and some not so hidden Grandmother’s Flower Gardens and appliquéd flowers in contrasting colors. As my quilt progressed, my artistic freedom became more bolder with color choices less subtle. You can find hidden smiles (represents my dental background), pumpkins and several Elvis’s.
Why did you decide to do all that bias appliqué and embroidery on the back?
Some of the prettiest quilts I’ve admired at shows have been reversible and I wanted to do at least one in my lifetime. The embroidery idea was definitely inspired by Sieglande Schoen Smith in her quilt, Mother Earth and Her Children. I had the pleasure to meet her when she one Best of Show at Lancaster Pennsylvania. She had extensive embroidery in her quilt and did not quilt through those areas. By embroidering on the back, it masked the areas that were not quilted. I did not want to quilt through my appliquéd circles and ovals as it distorted them. By embroidering and adding bias appliqué to the back I was able to quilt in any color, light or dark with a light colored backing and not have to worry about how the stitches would appear. For example my yellow section quilted in yellow thread was almost invisible on the back where as a darker color like blue or purple really showed up and made the back look unbalanced. My quilting was in a triangular pattern and the bias strips and embroidery are both done in three different colors in a cross hatching pattern. This took six months to complete the back alone and believe it or not my initial design was going to be even more complex.
How long did it take you to make the quilt and how many pieces are in it?
The quilt is entirely made by hand and took 3.5 years to make working 20-50 hours a week. There are 12, 256 hexagons, 63 large circle, 633 small circles and 378 ovals. I did not count how many appliquéd strips are on the back or the beads on the front.