This year I decided to make a feather star for my Hoffman Challenge. I bought the Marsha McCloskey Feathered Star books and ruler. I made the star in one day. Each half square triangle measures one inch finished. I had to sew this star together on my Singer Feather weight machine as it had to be a precise scant 1/4 inch seam on every seam to fit together correctly. Having the ruler really made the difference. The hardest part was going through my stash of fabric to find fabric that would work with the challenge fabric. The blue was a comp fabric to the challenge fabric. The rest of the fabric was batiks from my stash. I bought a yard of the challenge fabric and a yard of the blue fabric. Every other fabric I already had in my stash. The yellow fabric was a fossil fern fabric that I have owned for over decade. I felt that the yellow area was way too large of a area of one color. At this point I decided to hand quilt the quilt and to showcase my hand quilting in the yellow area. I quilted circles and flowers around the star. I did one at a time using two different templates and chalk. I do not use a hoop I free hand quilt sitting in my recliner with my feet up. There are weeks of evening TV listening as I quilted this challenge. I guess it worked as I was awarded Best hand workmanship in pieced quilts. I did not pay for the judges comments this year as last years judge was so critical of my work I decided to for go that pain. Now I wish I had paid for the comments. I admit I have two points that are cut short and I really believed that was enough to not even get excepted. To my surprise it did not seem to matter. I also applied little fabric flowers over existing flowers in the border. And crystals in the center of the circles and the flowers. Just for fun.
The top photo is at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Festival in Colorado.
The second is a page from the Hoffman Book of the traveling quilts, clothes, dolls and other items.
Yes I am excited to have been excepted to have a quilt to travel and to have won a top prize
