Finishing Fall: Norwegian Star

I didn't intend for this lengthy hiatus from writing! Sometime last month, I looked around at all my errant stacks of different pieces and realized that I needed to at least temporarily focus my energies and try to actually finish some works in progress. It's not just that I've got a lengthy WIP list, but that I tend to grab on to new projects and ideas and leave others for months when they're actually closer to being finished than not. I eyeballed a few of my projects and thought, "If I just gave that two weeks of undivided attention, I bet I could finish that." I made a list of seven projects - five tops close to finishing, and two sets of sampler blocks that will still need settings. This particular project took a little more that two weeks, but today, this top is done!

 I don't remember when I realized that fair isle knitting patterns could double as designs for quilts - maybe I saw a pattern on a blog, maybe I was just flipping through one of my graph paper notebooks and noticed the similarities between the different sketches. I've been knitting much longer than I've been sewing - over ten years! In more recent years, I made an effort to add stranded color knitting to my skill set.

A Norwegian star design I knitted:

A holder I designed and knitted for my Kindle:

Both those projects, as well as the quilt top design, were accomplished by consulting with Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting, a classic resource. (If you're interested in a breakdown of what Fair Isle is and how to put a pattern together, it's a great book. It's from 1988, so the photos with the sweater patterns are definitely dated, but it's one of those old-school information goldmines.)

I based the quilt design on a Norwegian star pattern, as well as a separate color scheme included in the book. The original star is on a 25 x 25 grid, and I added a row around the outside so it would be a 27 x 27 grid and I could easily divide it into 3 x 3 grid blocks that would finish at six inches. The border is basically included in the blocks. The overall top is about throw-sized.

Here you can see the grid as I broke it down. The sections at the bottom with the hashmarks are where I recorded to make sure I'd cut enough of the pieces I needed of the background fabric. I chose Riley Blake basics for the main fabric - their small dots - and Kona Ash for the background.

I'm not sure when exactly I started this project, or when I abandoned it to focus on other things. My last Ash purchase was around two years ago, so it must have been around then. When I picked it back up in August, I had already finished all the navy, aqua and red blocks, and had cut all the fabric for everything else and divided each type of block (since the grid is symmetrical around the center) into a separate baggie. Finishing the blocks took longer than I expected - my original "two week" estimate - but once I got on a roll, it wasn't too hard to get it done.

Once more, just for effect!

I like the way this turned out, though I think that there's not quite enough value difference between the aqua dots and the Ash. I've got some ideas for quilting that might better mark the distinction between the background and the main fabric.

I could see revisiting this pattern in the future - if there's interest, I might try to pull together a tutorial, and there's all sorts of designers whose palettes include these same colors that could be used for a scrappy version. Other Riley Blake basics come in the same colors, and I'd be intrigued to see how they could offer a tweaked version of the same aesthetic. I'd love to try it with all solids, or Karen Lewis' upcoming Blueberry Park line for Robert Kaufman.

Finishing Fall marches on! One down, six to go!