Lone Star Baby Quilt

I think this is my favorite quilt design. This one happens to be a baby quilt that I made to enter in the Boone County Fair, but it will ultimately go to my Granddaughter Lucy. The theme for her nursery is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. What better way to illustrate that than diamond shapes put together to form a star. I tried to pick colors that are present in flames so it would look like a flaming star. It is quilted by hand, and I made the binding out of the same colors as the star cut on the bias.
When I was a kid I used to watch my Grandma quilt. She had a quilting frame that my Grandpa made for her out of 2x4's that he split and it was held up with tomato cages that he also built. I grew up thinking that you had to have a frame to quilt. Since I didn't have one, or the room to put one up, I had resigned myself to thinking I couldn't quilt by hand. Then one day (I think it was in 1998) I say an episode of Simply Quilts with Alex Anderson where she talked about lap quilting and the techniques of hand quilting. It was like a light bulb came on over my head. I got some scrap pieces of fabric and batting, layered them together and started practicing her techniques. OK, at first I was terrible, but it didn't take long before I got the hang of it. I made only small projects at first, and gradually worked my way up to larger and larger ones. The first Queen sized quilt I finished by hand was my chicken quilt that took over 2 years (half of that time was spent embroidering the chickens). With practice I got a lot faster and now I can complete a King sized quilt from start to finish in about 45 days. I know a lot of people don't want to invest that much time into a single project, but the feeling of accomplishment you get when you are finally finished is out of this world. Thanks to Alex Anderson, where ever you are.