Schoolhouse is a top ... haunted no more

I have had quite the journey with my schoolhouse quilt and at last it is a top.  Come along and I will show how my borders came to be.

Once my centre blocks were all assembled and sewn together with the sashings, the time had come to decide on the borders. 

Numerous red fabrics were pulled and auditioned along with different versions of stars. This is the final selection for the borders.  I definitely love the two different star sizes.

Once the borders were sewn on, it helped to define the look and to help me decide if I was going in the right directions with those stars.

The more stars were made and pinned onto the border, the more I was falling in love.

 Then, I thought about putting small circles inside the larger stars.  Yes, that will do quite nicely!  :o)

After sewing a few stars on each night, I would pin my top onto my design wall and sit back in my chair and drool and pinch myself if this was real.  Seeing my progress each night kept me motivated to finish the border and this top!

Here is a close-up of the stars:

At last, my top is finished and I am haunted no more.  Haunted?  Read on.

My love affair with this top all started with this quilt below.  DH and I stopped in at the quilt show (May 2005) in Kingston, Ontario on our way from Toronto to Quebec City to visit family there.  We only had a few hours to do the show and DH snapped photos of the quilts while I browsed the vendors and the guild booth.  This quilt haunted me.  Was there a pattern?  Debra was also at this show (before we became friends) and every so often we would talk about this quilt and again asked: "was there a pattern"?  Finally Debra and no-blog Mary asked if I could draft up the block.  Well, yes, I think I can?  It wasn't easy drafting that pattern, but finally it came to be.   You can go here for a tutorial on how to make your own block.

It turns out that the Kingston guild had a blurb about this quilt at the time of the 2005 show.  The quilt that inspired the guild ladies to make this quilt came from Donna Thomas.  You can go here to read more about it.

Then, a few days after I finished sewing the last star onto my top and exactly 2 years after I first posted about this quilt here, an email was received from the designer and copyright holder of this pattern.   Andrea Blackhurst is her name and her pattern appeared in Quilt magazine, fall 1996.  The photo below is how this quilt appeared in the magazine (thanks Andrea for giving me permission to use your photo). 

My version of THE quilt is made and I'm haunted no more!

Now, it is time to get on with another UFO!

Have a great day!