Carlene Foster's Gallery : Stars, Machine Piecing

St. Louis Star #3

Carlene Foster — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 15:49:52 GMT

I did mention that I love this design, right? This was made with 8 inch finished stars, which I thought afterward were entirely too small (meaning, I didn't feel like making 50 of them to make a queen sized quilt). I put a 3 inch border of the background fabric around each star and set them on point to make them appear larger. :) Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

St. Louis Star #2

Carlene Foster — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 17:47:39 GMT

This is my second St. Louis Star quilt. The centers are fussy cut, and since there are only so many motifs available on one piece of fabric, there are some variations in the group. Different color pallate than the first, but equally visually interesting. The nice thing about the St. Louis Star is that there are no Y seams in the construction, although it certainly appears that there were several. I love it when someone figures out the easier way to do something for me ahead of time. :)

Sampling sampler quilts completed

Carlene Foster — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 23:04:25 GMT

This is how I finished the blocks into a completed quilt top. You would think I shouls be finished with these fabrics by now, right? I found another 4 yards of the wild rose in the house after I had ordered 3 more yards (that brought the total to 15 yards purchased outside the original finishing set for the original wildflower rose BOM. And, I find myself with a bunch of the other fabrics left as well. Might be a lap quilt or more left in this batch....we are beyond bonus. Now we are into the "challenge phase" of how to use up this fabric.

Stonehenge BOM 2012 (full picture)

Carlene Foster — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 16:04:52 GMT

Daylight allows me to take a picture of the entire quilt, as long as it is not raining or the wind is not blowing excessively. A little wind today, but not so bad temp wise, and no additonal snow (yet) I love the full effect of this quilt....more than I liked some of the individual blocks. If you make this one, watch the color combinations. I had a couple of blocks that were brown on brown with the biggest contrast being another shade of brown. I substitued the orange to liven it up a little.

Insanity in reds and greens

Carlene Foster — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:12:46 GMT

Carpenter's star and filler blocks. This was the third quilt I did........ever. I had a hard time figuring out how to put the rows together because of the fillers, so I did a lot of partial seams as I traveled down each row. Now that I know a little more of what I am doing, I wish I could find this pattern again! You could do this in any color combination you want....I just chose various shades of red and green because that is what the one in the picture looked like. I am kind of a visual person. :)

Strip Therapy Stars

Carlene Foster — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 04:02:20 GMT

one Jelly roll of choice, some accents, some backgroiund fabric....a quilt. :) Stri Therapy 6, "Seeing Stars"

Marti Michel's Wild Rose BOM

Carlene Foster — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:45:38 GMT

This was the first BOM program I ever did. And, it was my first experience with Marti Michel's templates....which I have absolutely grown to love. I thought this fabric was soooooooooooo much a have to have because it still strikes me as being so feminine and beautiful. Two of my latest quilts were an effort to use up the additional fabric I had purchased from this line...when I like something, I tend to purchase in bulk, so it seems. I am proud to say my 3 large bags of fabric now fit into one bag. The color choices are waining, and soon there will only be a few scrapts to add to other quilts in the making. I still love this quilt, though.

Iowa Star Scrap Quilt

Carlene Foster — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:25:22 GMT

This was a pattern created by a native of Traer, Iowa. This is just up the road from my sister's house, and I didn't even know there was a quilt shop so close to her...guess where I am stopping my next trip? This is the kind of quilt you do when the partiallly used fq's and the scraps outnumber the full pieces. It used a lot of scraps, and a lot of those fq's that I just didn't know how I was going to use them anywhere...ever. Loved the effect....and there will never be another one exactly like this one...ever. Next one I make, I will keep the neutrals very light and not use so much yellow on a focal block.

Pentagon prototype

Carlene Foster — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 18:23:27 GMT

This wasn't a pattern, per se. The stars were made with a specialty ruler called "Jewel Box Gems 5 and 10". I had bought the wide border fabric a few years ago at Hancocks when it was on sale (of course), so there was no chance of getting more. I had enough of the wide border fabric to fussy cut the spokes on the stars, and then found out there was enough left to do a border around the outside. The pink fabric around the stars was the only piece I had leftover from another series of fabrics, also not a current line. It was my limiting factor, as there was only enough of it to do 6 of these pentagon shaped medallions. The blue......controversial choice, but I was tired of the muted colors and didn't have a green that would match the swirls in the border fabric, so I went with the turquoise. The connecting wedges......eek.... I didn't have any more of the pink fabric and I didn't have anything that would match any of the rest except the turquoise, which I had already had some resistance to. So, I went to the quilt shop, took the pieces, explained what I wanted to do. The owner majored in engineering when she was in college, so she figured out the angles for me and we picked the dark pink fabric from her inventory. It took me about 4 months to get the courage to decide to complete this endeavor. My first task was to find my Squedge ruler, which is the 18 degree one, because I needed a 36 degree angle. Freezer paper template was made, I was in business. Lucky for me, there was enough of the dark pink to bind the quilt when it was done, too. That is how this quilt came to be. All because I wanted to (1) use up some fabric that was already in my stash and (2) to finally use one of those specialty rulers that I "just had to have". This is the first quilt I have hand quilted in a few years now. Pentagon.....probably would fit a double bed, but I'm thinking it would drape better off a single bed. I could see this pattern done with red stars, white insets and an entirely navy blue background, blending the wedges into the background pieces.

Bits and Pieces

Carlene Foster — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 22:33:41 GMT

I love brights, and I love scrappy. This pattern allowed me to use up some of my scraps and practice some new patterns. I think I needed this after a round of pastels and florals....

New twist on an old design

Carlene Foster — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:28:19 GMT

I saw this pattern in a quilting magazine (I'm thinking Quilters World), made up in country blues and paisley and flowers. I liked the pattern, but didn't have all of those wonderful fabrics to work with. I used a retro 70's hippy flower power kind of fabric to fussy cut the large and small flowers, then a variety of red/black prints that I had purchased in a bundle at Hancock's. When my older son saw the flowers on the design wall with the black sashing, he was determined that the finished product would be his. He thought the reds/blacks had an oriental feel, so that was his calling. :) Another son who sleeps in Mom's hug all night long. :)

St. Louis Star Table Runner

Carlene Foster — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:38:44 GMT

I had 3 stars leftover from my other Flourish projects, so I made a table runner just to make certain these choice pieces didn't end up in a pieced quilt backing later on. I'm thinking that since I always seem to have excess binding at the end of a project and usually manage to miscount blocks along the way anyway, this might be a small project I'll be doing more of with the leftovers. These table runners can also be used for festive dresser scarves, or instead of quilting, could be stuffed and used as a decorative pillow (with a few minor modifications). Creative juices are flowing........ :)

Flourishing St. Louis Star

Carlene Foster — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:34:50 GMT

This is my third quilt this season from Robert Kaufman's Flourish fabric. I am hoping there is only enough left to make a table runner or something small. I'm ready to be finished with this fabric, although it is still my favorite so far. The pattern for the stars is from Toby Lisshko's St. Louis Star. The large one is 16 inches, the smaller are 10 inches. If you have a chance to check out her book, you will see how sinfully easy these stars are....there are no Y seams. My biggest challenge was that I ran out of the green fabric and had to really scrimp to make it go as far as it did. That was the beauty of the St. Louis Star pattern. You can make a lot out of a little. The quilt pattern itself is one of my own making.....I'm not certain how much of a design you can call this, but I definitely did not have a pattern beyond the stars themselves.