Filling Voids

Lynne, over at Patchery Menagerie, has a terrific post up today. She's showing a layout she's designed for her fascinating bird blocks. It's an irregular lay-out; that is, there aren't the traditional even rows and columns and there aren't even lattices and cornerstones. Rather, there are occasional voids. It will be tricky to put that quilt together and I'm following eagerly to see it happen.

Lynne's birdy quilt got me thinking about the first time I ever tried something like that. It was a long time ago, thirteen years or so, and Andrew had returned from a semester in Australia which had been a marvelous experience for him. Someone was selling Australian prints, some of which were aboriginal designs. I shared the link with Andrew and he said that they definitely reminded him of his time in Oz. And, yes, he would love a quilt made from them.

I didn't know a flying goose from a sitting duck back then. But I knew what kind of stars I wanted and figured out how to create them using HSTs. So they're a little different from regular Sawtooth Stars made with flying geese. I used three or four sizes of geese; perhaps 6, 9, and 12 inches or maybe they were 3, 6, and 9 inches. And I wanted them scattered like stars in the sky, not in tidy rows. I struggled mightily because, of course, I had to insert fabric for the voids. It was hugely challenging. But I persevered.  And finished and hand-tied the quilt.

This quilt is reminiscent of one I finished last year for my niece that had a different kind of star, and I made it according to a pattern so there wasn't the challenge of filling the voids. I made a baby quilt for Aberdeen when she was born and it, too, was made from those HST type stars with an irregular layout. And this is the "recipe" for laying that one out. It's been a little while since I did one of these but I suspect I've not made the last of them.

Oh, and Andrew still has the Australian quilt. We slept under it a couple of weeks ago.