The Purple Maiden

Phew, another Lemoyne Star in the books! I have so much to say about this mini quilt and yet the words escape.

I started this mini quilt the last week of March after hearing about the Pantone Quilt Challenge hosted by Brian House Quilts and No Hats in the House. Maybe it’s Pantone’s marketing materials or my brief Astronomy studies in college by whenever I think of Ultraviolet, I think of stars. So I immediately knew I wanted to make a Lemoyne Star, but I wanted to take it a little further than my last one.

The construction of each star point is a little bit like a log cabin, which I then joined to create the star. This proved to be a little bit difficult of a way to go about it and had to scratch my first star after it came out wonky.

The colors and construction came from the idea that the star is pulsing or glowing, so it starts dark at its core and gets lighter and lighter in each of the three sections.

As far as the quilting goes, I knew from the get-go that I wanted to do a mix of machine and hand quilted. I did machine quilting at the dark purple center, followed by hand quilting in the next two sections - the light purple and white. Then I finished it off with some more machine quilting.

For the binding, I tried to keep it simple but had to add a little flair. I used the matching dark purple but added a section that matches the backing fabric I used. I LOVE the backing fabric and couldn’t bear not seeing it again hidden against the wall.

For being a mini quilt, this is the one quilt I’ve done and redone and used my seam ripper with the most. I cannot tell you how many stitches I pull out from start to finish, from the piecing to the quilting, to the binding. Not one part was one and done. Originally the quilting at the center was white. The hand quilting I redid as I went to make sure it was centered and straight (a hard feat with two boys crawling on me all the time haha). Then I had white hand quilting in the background which I ripped out in exchange for purple machine quilting. And let's not even talk about how many times I messed up on the binding haha.

In the end, though, it was all worth it. I love how it all came together at the end. I love, love this mini quilt.

Behind the Name

I almost submitted this as Untitled Star #2, but that changed last night. Going back to the thought of astronomy and the sky stars, I took to google to see which is the brightest star in ultraviolet light. While Sirius is the brightest star to the naked eye, the star Adhara is the brightest source of ultraviolet light in our sky.

Adhara derives from the Arabic phrase “Al Adhara” which roughly translates to “the Maidens,” hence The Purple Maiden.

Project Title: Purple Maiden
Quilt Dimensions: 23 x 23 inches
Country of Residence: Germany