A Bluestocking Knits

Sewing Stars

For a long time, I've had a hankering for a quilt like the one called "Kate's Stars" in Diana Boston's book about Lucy Boston's quilts -- she of the "Green Knowe" series of children's novels set in and around a house much like her own ancient one at Hemingford Grey. All of Mrs. Boston's quilts -- and she was famous for them, not only their number and her skill in designing and stitching them, but in her frequent use of them not only on beds but as sofa covers and curtains in her exceedingly drafty house with its origins in the 12th century -- were stitched in the English patchwork manner, basting fabric around paper shapes, then stitching those basted shapes together along the edges by hand. 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

(This photo is the "newer" side of the house -- for more photos of the house and of Mrs. Boston's patchworks, see the Green Knowe website here. Tales of Cloth has a post about Mrs. Boston's quilts and their inspiration for other quilters.)

I know I need another project like I need a hole in the head, as they say, but there it is -- I've had the quilt papers for some years now, and piles of fabric scraps even longer.  I had some semi-inactivity last week, staying with my mother-in-law after her hip surgery, so it felt like the time was right!  I got most of these stars basted and sewn then -- the method has long struck me as rather tedious and inefficient, having to baste the paper shapes to the fabric then go over the whole thing again to sew it together, and this is certainly true -- but if you consider the exceptional tidiness of the finished block, especially in places where numerous points come together, and the fact that you almost never need to re-sew a block that got off-kilter (ahem ...), the "tedium" of the prep loses much of its sting.

After making up a few more stars, I will decide on a solid color -- some shade of off-white, I suspect -- for the diamonds that will go between the arms of the stars to connect them to each other.

This and That

Here are some of the things I've been doing lately --

Crocheted dishcloths for Julia, off to university at last and living with three roommates in an apartment on the edge of campus, cooking and cleaning for themselves.  Above are the Berry Stitch cloth (without its edging), the Waffle Stitch cloth (potentially useful as a trivet, I suspect, it's so thick!), and a returning favorite, the Spiral Double Crochet cloth.

I'm quite pleased with these, actually -- a pair of potholders (also for Julia) to the 1960s "Pinwheel Potholder" pattern from Free Vintage Crochet.  Because I thought it would be fun, one side is solid and the other variegated.  I had to add another round to get the recommended dimension on the variegated side, as apparently the two Sugar 'n Cream colorways are not quite the same weight (!) -- and then fudge the edging that stitches them together -- but this was not difficult.  I'm highly amused at the plainness of the solid pink with the surprise of the variegated colors when you turn them over -- simple pleasures!

And a set of table napkins in a fabric selected by herself from the deep-sale bin at Hancock's of Paducah --

This one is to replace a decrepit one at home -- it is actually a face scrubbie pattern, but eh, I'm using it as a dish cloth!  I like ones with a good amount of texture to them, which the front-post DCs certainly give.  (My phone camera, by the way, seems entirely content with the color balance and saturation of fabrics, but gets a bit manic when confronted with kitchen cotton.  None of these is particularly accurate -- though the blue-and-white one is probably the closest.)

And the current state of my "Quaker Sampling III" -- nearly there!