I have always been so amazed by feathered star quilts, especially the quilts that were made in the 1800s. e quilter from the 1800s did not have the “tools” of today. ey made those fabulous quilts using a template made of whatever was available along with their fabric, needle, thread and scissors. My dear friend, Diane Donnelly, and I share a passion for old quilts. In 2009, she gave me a book called Quilts eir Story and How to Make em, written by Marie D. Webster in 1915. Seeing how excited I was with that book, she gave me another later that year called Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America written by Carrie A. Hall and Rose G. Kretsinger in 1935. at was all the inspiration I needed to write a book on how to paper piece feathered stars. ( at is the only way to make a feathered star quilt … right?) Some of the designs in the books used pieces that nished at 1" or less, and I have to admit some of them were quite a challenge to dra . I wanted to get as many designs as possible into one quilt along with a border block (I had to have a border block) that I had seen on one of the quilts without making the book so big you couldn’t li it. I hope you like the selection of feathered star blocks I have chosen to include. Some of the blocks you may have seen before but others are designs that I think will be a pleasant surprise.
Carolyn Cullinan McCormick currently lives in Franktown, Colorado, which is just a hop, skip and a jump from Denver, with her husband, Larry. ey have a son, Ryan, and a daughter, Jennifer. Ryan and his wife, Megan, have two little girls, McKenna Carolyn who is 4 and Kate Elizabeth who is 1. Jennifer and her husband Anthony have a son, Lincoln Larry who is 3 months old. Carolyn started to quilt in 1985 when she and her family moved to Bozeman, Montana. ere she worked and taught a variety of quilting and cra classes at e Patchworks from 1987 to 1995. In 1995, she invented the Add-A-Quarter ruler to make rotary cutting of templates easier. e Add-A-Quarter has now become a standard tool for paper piecing. Carolyn has invented other tools as well: e Add-An-Eighth, Add- ree-Eighths and the Add-Enough are more of the gadgets that make life much easier for quilters. You can see all her products and books at www.addaquarter.com.