Little Cherokee Stars quilt is one of my most unusual quilts. It has the feel of an informal Gees Bend or Outsider quilt because it has very little intentional framing. I made it using the san blas style of underlayment applique, with informal Cherokee 7-point stars going up the middle. And the copper and gold fabrics are vintage 1960s shirting fabric-- the kind that looks copper from one direction and green if you look at it from another direction. It has been spoken-for and will go to a member of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. It also has a lot of hand-dyed fabric which I made early in my learning journey. I practiced for years on recycled sheets before ever aspiring to use new fabric. When I finally took the big step, I was amazed at how pure, rich and deep the colors now were. I learned from it that after many washings, fabric fibers take up a lot of chemicals like soap and bleach, which keep the dyes from bonding uniformly, smoothly on every little molecule, and this you get a fainter tiedye when recycling. The two iris panels are hand dyed by a couple of tiedye and hand painting artists in Australia who do gorgeous fat quarters... which are ever so slightly not the same size as American fat quarters. They use a light grade of muslin. I can only imagine what beautiful work they could do if they actually used fine cottons.
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