A Finish!

Above is a miniature Star of Bethlehem that I just finished this morning. (Click on it to enlarge.)  It is hand pieced, hand quilted and the binding was applied by hand.  The fabrics are circa 1840's.  As you can imagine, fabrics with that much age are hard to come by.  The yellow and light blue were quilt pieces that I bought from a vendor last year at the Paducah Quilt Show.  She told me that she had spent the previous winter taking apart a quilt to save what she could. I snapped them up and was happy to find them.  I was so excited to find them, I neglected to ask her what kind of quilt it was.  However, upon examination of the pieces I am fairly certain it was a Star of Bethlehem.  Those fabrics have made a complete circle now. For the background fabric part of a panel was used that I bought at one of Nashville, Tennessee's famous antique shows.  A vendor had three panels of the same fabric.  They were all in poor condition, but their age made them very desirable to me. 

You can not see it very well in the photo, but it has the famous "buff and blue" combo. The vendor only wanted $25 or $30 for all the panels and you can imagine how happy I was to find them. They are invaluable to me.  Part of the large designs were fussy cut to put in the corners of this quilt. It is extremely challenging to incorporate a large design in a miniature, so I was proud of myself for using it in this manner.  If you study quilts from the 1840's, you will see that many of them appear to be very "busy" to our eyes today.  I tried to capture that idea, but yet not have it overwhelm the quilt.  A delicate balance.

Above is the photo of my quilt and my hand - you knew it was coming, didn't you?  The quilt is 13.25" square.  I cut the binding at .625" wide to finish at .125" wide.

Just a note:  Robin left a comment saying she wished she could see my quilts up close.  Well,  you pretty much are seeing them up close.  The photos are taken from about 2 feet away.  You are used to seeing photos of large quilts and in order to see the whole quilt, you have to be quite a distance from them.  Not so here.  When I take a photo with my hand,  I put my right hand on the quilt and reach over to my camera on its stand and snap the pic with my left hand.  So all the photos are up close and personal. 

Thanks to everyone who troubles themselves to leave a comment.  They are all greatly appreciated.

Till next time,

Sheila