Little Green Man Quilt

This block has been floating around on Pinterest for some time, and I really like it so It’s been on my to-do list.

This is a copy from Pinterest, where the block has been widely shared without attribution

I don’t like to borrow things without attribution, so I went in search of just who designed this.  Luckily, my friend Elizabeth was in a bee that used this block, so I learned from her blog that the block was designed by Kylie Kelsheimer.  A friend of Elizabeth’s located the original post for her through the wayback machine.  You can find Elizabeth’s post about all this here (you’ll have to scroll down quite a bit) and the original pattern here.  I see from Elizabeth’s latest post that the pattern is now available through PayHip, but that was not the case when I first investigated it a year ago and started this project.

Which brings me to why I changed it all up.  The original block is small and paper pieced–not my style!  I wanted to make it big and make the stars wonky.  Therefore, the instructions here are NOT for Kylie’s block, though the idea is based on her original block as noted above.  In fact, the block as shown on Pinterest is really 4 blocks, each rotated so that they fit together as shown in the pin.

I drew the block with Electric Quilt so that it finishes 18″ square.  Here it is showing fabrics.

My wonky star block, drawn with Electric Quilt 8

And here is the base block in case you want to make it yourself:

Star base block, drawn with Electric Quilt 8

Here is my tutorial on making sew-and-flip stars, in case you’ve never done it before.

As you can see, I substituted my Little Green Man for 4 of the blocks–those would be the 4 in the lower right-hand corner looking at my layout above.  You will see that I rotated the blocks various ways, which is how Little Green Man ended up in the lower left corner after I substituted him in the lower right.

You can find my instructions for making the LIttle Green Man here.

And here is one of the finished wonky star blocks.

The finished quilt:

QUILT DETAILS

Little Green Man

Finished size: 54” x 72”

A variety of fabrics from different manufacturers

The pattern is outlined in the blog above, but is not available commercially

Quilted by Julia Madison, except for the Little Green Man block, which she left for me because I wanted to avoid any extra holes in the Kraft-Tex I used for applique.

Now, does anyone else recall the “Little Green Man” song from the 1950s?

Auction!

Remember that quilt I made to donate to the Alliance for American Quilts “TWENTY” contest?  If not, you can see a section of it as the header for my blog, and you can read about it here.Rising Star for Web

In any case, the time has come!  The TWENTY entries have travelled to shows around the country and are now up for auction on eBay.  The group that includes my quilt will be auctioned starting at 9:00 EST (U.S.) tomorrow night.

I’ve been happy to learn about the Quilt Alliance over the past few months.  I originally donated a quilt because I liked the idea of the TWENTY challenge and I’m always donating quilts to various causes—who isn’t?  However, I’ve since learned that the Alliance has several missions I’m especially happy to support:

  • They promote awareness of quilting as a grassroots American art form
  • They document quilts so their stories aren’t lost, and encourage all quilters to document their work
  • They make their information available to the public through various forums, including an association with The University of Texas at Austin (where I went to school)

The Quilt Alliance has numerous projects to further their goals, and their staff are some of the nicest people I’ve encountered.  They have a fun blog that presents quilts from various periods in history, and you can subscribe by e-mail so you get to see different quilts from their records.

Check out the Quilt Alliance website and then check out the Ebay auction.  You may become a Quilt Alliance fan, too!

Oh, yes, and bid on the quilts.  Most of them are by people a lot more famous than I am  😉  You might enjoy going to the Ebay site just to look at the quilts!