Carlene Foster's Gallery : Stars, Wall Quilts

Sophia: Jinny Beyer kit

Carlene Foster — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:46:03 GMT

I bought this on one of Fons and Porters' kit sales. The picture online was nice, but the actual fabrics were striking. This is the Sophia design, done in the topaz colorway. This will be a favorite for a long time.

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.

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.