Star of Bethlehem Quilt

Perhaps the coolest case of “things are not as they might first seem” I’ve owned.

The sun-faded lines on this quilt’s green ground are possibly the first thing that anyone sees… maybe second. Some might presume that an all-too-common tragedy has befallen the poor textile, but a little more study reveals the clever game its maker played.

Notice that – while prominent – the fade lines do not pass through either the large central star or the zigzag border (both of which are comprised of equally fugitive colors). Simultaneously, those lines form a perfect grid across the body of the textile, centering north/south and east/west, with the innermost lines seeming to cross through the center of the quilt and the outermost lines aligning with the quilt’s edges.

There’s only one way in which this could have happened, and that’s that the sweet emerald green fabric was sun-faded before this quilt was constructed, and the quilter devised a way to take that material flaw and turn it into a component of the larger design.

Further proof of the quilter’s intention is the fact that the star, border, and green ground are pieced together (rather than the star and border appliqued on top of the green). This means, of course, that all of the pieces were carefully arranged in order to extend those lines to the edges of the quilt in an uninterrupted manner.

The body of the quilt is otherwise filled with classic quilting forms: feathered wreaths on waffled backgrounds in each of the four corners with partial wreaths along top, bottom, left and right sides, AND an undulating feathered garland border surrounding the whole composition. Each diamond that forms the body of the star is echo-stitched through the backing.

The backing fabric is solid red pieced together in two bands that wrap around the front to bind the edges.

Let’s hear it for tricky quilters!

Pennsylvania or New Jersey origin.