Madison Star Quilt

I know that most of you, if not all, have by this time seen at least the pattern for Karen Gibbs' "Madison Star".  And you may have checked out her Face Book page or local quilt shops and have seen examples of the quilt.  What is very hard to convey by looking at either the pattern cover or samples on the wall is how very much this pattern adapts to any fabric choice.  Some people may look at the pattern and think, "Oh, this isn't for me.  I love repro fabric in traditional settings, and this pattern is too contemporary."  Or, "My taste is contemporary and this wall hanging looks so muted and gentle and well, old-timey."  If you like the traditional look in quilts, think "Lone Star" and all the different fabrics in which you've seen that pattern made.  If modern is what you want to pursue, take a look at the two possibilities below.

 

Okay the first photo is no help at all.  I just really liked the way my scraps looked after I squared up my strips.  The dark green batik isn't one of mine; it's a piece Karen gave us to practice with - more about that later. 

 

 

ME and I took the class together, and for once, she is making a quilt for herself (after years and years of making quilts for everyone else, she's about due!).  So to please herself, she purchased jelly rolls of bright batiks with Kona's Jet Black as her background.  Sorry, I can't remember if the jelly roll was from Anthologie or another fabric manufacturer.  Her strips have not been sewn together at this point.  We were to put the strips for our first strip set up on the design wall so we (and more importantly, Karen) could make sure we had sewed the strips correctly and they were in the right order.  Doesn't this strip set make you smile and feel cheerful?

 

 

This next example is mine, and I chose Rowan fabrics (mostly Kaffe Fassett but not all) from Westminster Fabrics with a Kona solid in Eggplant as my background.  Fabrics from the Rowan designers are too bright and bold and big for many tastes but cut up in small pieces one has wonderful saturated colors.  I just adore the way this looks.  By the way, the colors I have chosen will stay similar throughout the quilt but the individual fabrics will change.

 

There are tricky parts to this pattern.  The first one is keeping your 8 different fabrics (#8 is the background color) in the correct order.  If you label everything as the pattern tells you to and follow the directions carefully, you'll be fine.  The second one is learning how to sew an accurate Y-seam on the sewing machine.  It's easy to do by hand but not so easy on the machine - unless you follow Karen's instructions and practice  using her methodology.  Below is a photograph of  ME's and my practice Y-seam blocks (hard to see but the dark green batik from the scraps photo forms the base in these blocks) hanging out together on the design wall.  Pretty neat don't you think?

 

All this being said and done, the pattern is extraordinarily well laid out and written (read it all, use a highlighter to mark the tricky bits for the size you're making, follow the directions!).   While you can certainly do it yourself, I do recommend taking the class from Karen using whatever fabrics you like best. 

 

Whether you make it yourself or take the class, do put yourself in the designer's hands.  If you've always done things a certain way, allow yourself to be flexible and try it Karen's way. After all, she created the pattern, wrote it up, made ten Madison Star samples, and knows what she's talking about!