Inspirations for a New Project

I’m still working on big-stitch hand-quilting of Untied. It is slow, almost by definition.

For the last few weeks, though, I’ve been thinking about a new project, and I finally started it last week. My thinking was inspired by a blogger who used diamonds to create a quilt. (I’m sorry I don’t remember whose blog that was.) Of course diamonds have been used almost as long as patchwork has been around. An old configuration is the Lone Star or Star of Bethlehem quilt form.

The Star of Bethlehem quilt uses 45° parallelograms radiating from the center to create an eight-pointed star. Here is an especially beautiful version from around 1850. This photo is courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Because of the angle, this creates a relatively narrow shape, which is why eight segments or points fit around the center. (See some of Barbara Brackman’s many posts on using diamonds. This one shows several fine Star of Bethlehem quilts. And for more fun take a look here and here.) 

I want to use 60° diamonds instead. These make a wider parallelogram than the 45° version. Here is a photo of a quilt block I made using 60° angles to create a star:

African fabrics. I pieced the star and appliqued it onto the background.

The blog that inspired me, however, didn’t use these patches to make a star. It simply ran the patches in interlocking lines, top to bottom. This reminded me more of a harlequin pattern. Pablo Picasso painted several pictures of harlequins, pantomimes wearing costumes covered with diamonds.

Inspired yet? More next time…