Several years ago my brother’s house was completely destroyed in a fire. There was absolutely nothing left except a few things in the front corner of the house which was the main bedroom. Even the kitchen appliances were vaporized. They barely got out of the house and didn’t even have time to put on their shoes. Interestingly enough, many of their quilts survived the fire. The boys were away at college and had their graduation quilts made by my mother. A quilt that I made and gifted them was displayed on a chair in the front entryway and partially survived. I promised to repair it and it has been sitting in a basket in my sewing room ever since. The problem with repairing it is that I didn’t know where to start. I have repaired several quilts over the years, but this one has damage everywhere. The binding is frayed and the fabric that looks like it is all right is very faded and damaged from the cleaning process that was used after the fire. This is a picture of the damaged quilt.
Recently I bought some beautiful Moda fabrics – one is a dark blue, one is a cream with blue flower sprays and the third is a rich red. In the process of prewashing and pressing the fabrics, I decided to pull out the damaged quilt and to see if these fabrics would work. And then seeing how simple the quilt actually is, it only made sense to use these three fabrics and make a replica of the original quilt. I spent the time between baking and getting ready for July 4th making the stars for this quilt.
As you can see, this is a simple but very pretty quilt with 12 stars bordered in blue and set with red sashing and borders. I made blocks one at a time on July 4 as I cooked and got ready for the grandchildren to come over. And yesterday I added block borders and sashing. This is the progress thus far.
The blocks are 9″ finished and bordered by 2″ finished blue strips for a finished block size of 13″. The center sashing is 3″ finished and the borders are 3″ finished (red) and 4″ finished (blue). I used the AccuQuilt GO! 6″ Qube with Shapes 1, 13, and 14 to make the stars and 2, 3, and 4″ strip dies for the remainder of the quilt. The outer border will be wider than the original, but I think this is going to be a nice quilt when finished.