This quilt was both a joy and a challenge. The joy was working with my friend to decide the pattern and style of quilt she wanted. The challenge lay in learning new techniques. I had not worked much with triangles and never diamonds before this one. Nor had I ever made a quilt with quite so many different shapes in one block. When we were looking at options for patterns, she decided she liked the “Storm at Sea” and “Snail Trails” combo. Though a little daunted at first, I spent some time looking up dimensions and trying to plan out a color scheme. Her husband is South African, and since they met, married, and started their family there, I decided to stick to all South African prints for the fabric. I had a variety of shweshwe on hand and I liked the idea of stars reaching out and touching.
Since there were so many different pieces to keep track of, I used a recycled piece of butcher paper to make “spots” for each shape in each color. As I cut them, I stacked them on the paper until it was time to sew them together. I also taped a large piece of felt to my guest room wall as a makeshift design board. As bits of each block were sewn together, I would place or pin them to the felt so that I could se what it would look like without losing any pieces. For the quilting stage, I decided to use straight lines in yellow and orange thread so that the star shapes would stand out on the backside. The blue areas are more heavily quilted with navy blue thread in a free-motion pebble pattern.
Creative Joy 