Donna’s Country Morning

The QM Scrap Squad is a select group of seven QM readers. They take one pattern from each regular issue of Quiltmaker and make their own scrappy versions to inspire you.

The Scrap Squad quilt from the recently released Sept/Oct Quiltmaker is Country Morning.

It was the Classic/Update, where we take a classic pattern from an early issue and update it.

Country Morning was designed by Judy Martin and made by Hatty Brown. Fabric: Lazy Daisy Baskets from Robert Kaufman.

The quilt above features printed fabric that suggests redwork embroidery in the cream-colored blocks. We asked the Scrap Squad to replace that fabric with something completely different. They came up with some great ideas which you’ll see in the coming weeks.

Today’s featured quilt is by Donna Hanley from Cincinnatus, New York. You’ll hear from Donna in her own words below.

I love paper piecing so I was eager to get started on this project. We were asked to replace the faux-embroidery blocks and I opted for pieced stars. I decided on a 7″ finished block with a .75″ (cut at 1.25″) border to float the star. I went with red, blue, green, purple, and gold, plus a variety of off-whites for the background.

LeMoyne Star block

 

 

I used Deb Tucker’s Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star ruler. Deb has rulers that make life easier for quilters, and I own them all. I can’t say enough good things about her rulers. She puts so much thought into their development, and the result is easier piecing that’s more exact. See Deb’s rulers and tutorials.

Deb Tucker’s Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star

 

 

Lemoyne Star with border

Once the stars were made, I moved on to the paper pieced connecting blocks.  I discovered that getting the seams to match exactly was tricky. I used a basting stitch where the seams came together (below).

Then I could peek, and if I was off, it was easy to pull out the stitches and try again.

I started building my quilt from the corners and worked toward the center. My first idea was to have each corner be a different color, coming to orange in the center. It got an emphatic thumbs down.

I decided to just let the corner colors continue to the center. I also changed the center square of each block to a subtle black print. I liked the result much better.

I didn’t like having the corners cut from the star block in the border. Again I got out a Deb Tucker ruler. The Wing Clipper & Wing Clipper II rulers make perfect flying geese units —exactly what was needed to complete the blocks out into the border. The Flying Geese unit needs to finish at 1.75″ x 3.5″ to fit.

The finished quilt:

Some of the quilting details:

 

Another beautiful job by a talented member of QM’s Scrap Squad. Wasn’t the idea of the floating stars a good one?! Thanks for your hard work on this one, Donna.