This is “Rising Star”, a quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance “Twenty” contest.  The contest celebrates the organization’s 20 years of existence.  If you don’t know about the Alliance for American Quilts, headquartered in Asheville, NC, visit their website here.

I’ve never, ever, entered a quilt in a contest before, because I make quilts for fun.  (Also because I was a little scared).  However, when I saw Victoria Findlay Wolfe‘s post about the quilt she was making for the “Twenty” contest, I said “Why not?”

This design had been in my head for some time (OK, years) but I hadn’t gotten around to making it up.  The contest seemed like a good opportunity.  I had some solids I’d recently bought for another purpose (oops) and they were perfect.  I did a bunch of drawings to scale on graph paper then constructed a complete star and quilted it.  Only then did I overlay my 20″ x 20″ cardboard frame to mark and cut the quilt to size with the star off- center..  I like it so much I think I’ll make a series of off-center star quilts, probably most of them lap quilt size rather than art quilt size like this one.

Having done it once, I’m no longer hesitant to enter a contest.  I’m still making quilts for fun, but I’ll share them more, both in shows and on this blog. What about you?

Next week’s post will be a pattern for a modern donation quilt.  Come back next Sunday!