I’ve been trying to work out a fun pattern for a wall quilt, to teach as a class at Allerton Park. My past classes have covered mug rugs and potholders, and those students each mentioned wanting to create an entire quilt, from start to finish, and learn more about making quilt blocks. But doing an entire lap quilt, start to finish, would be multiple weeks of classes, which would be too much commitment for me, and too costly for the students. Add to that the large outlay of money on materials, and it quickly becomes an Intro class that no one can afford. So I decided to try focusing on the steps of quilt making, and some of the most common quilt block components, like Half Square Triangles and Flying Geese. I also wanted a pattern that would appeal to a wide variety of people. I settled on the Illinois Star block, which contains both HSTs, Flying Geese, and the bonus of an Economy Block in the center.
Meanwhile… When I do these classes, I normally create kits in a variety of colors or themes, so students can pick one that speaks to them. But doing multiple colorways could quickly become expensive for me to make kits, that someone might not even pick. So I tried to focus on theme that would allow me to choose colors that many people would enjoy. As the block is already about my adopted home state of Illinois, and we’re in the central part of the state, I decided to use the colors and features of our landscape. The gold and light green represent our corn fields, the dark green for our soybean fields, the two shades of purple for the state flower, the Violet, and the pop of red for the state bird, the Cardinal, all surrounded by a bright sky blue.
I went with a few styles of quilting on this one. Straight lines around the border, the central diamond of the Violet, and within the dark green “fields”. I did some of my stippling in the sky, flowers, and border, and finally in the center, I created a 4-way heart. I sized the block up to 18", and added a narrow 1/2" dark green inner border, and a 2" light gold border, and bound it with the deep purple, to help the whole piece pop. All together it measures 23" square. Now I have to do the math to figure out how much fabric I will need for 8 or 9 more kits, the cost per kit for the students, and how many hours the class will need to be. (Oddly enough, I love doing quilt math.)
This is my prototype. I’m sure I’ll have to make at least one more, in order to write a tutorial, so I think I’ll be gifting this one to friends we made in town, who are moving back to Turkey in August. We became friends as our daughters were in preschool together, and learned that the wife was finishing her Masters at UIUC, and that the husband had done the same a few years ago. Several playdates and birthday parties later, and we’re so sad to see them all head home. They have really loved their time here in the Heartland, so I thought I could send a little piece of it home with them.