Several events motivated me to select the 1846 Rebecca Davis quilt as my inspiration. First was a workshop on hand-piecing the Le Moyne star, followed by my quilt guild’s Repro Bee’s choice of that star as a hand-piecing project. Then I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While there, I purchased the museum’s book, America’s Quilts & Coverlets in the MMA by Amelia Peck. The quilt featured on the cover caught my eye – Le Moyne stars.

I chose to create a smaller replica of the original quilt which measures 94 by 80, with eleven rows of nine stars across. The stars are about eight inches square. I created five inch blocks arranged in seven rows of six blocks. My fabric choices echoed Rebecca‘s, with quite a few blue, brown, and striped fabrics. Dogtooth borders were appliquéd onto muslin. I hand quilted the piece using quilting motifs to mimic what I could see in the photo.

The first thing that occurred to me as I worked on the hand quilting was that I needed to have been more careful to trim excess fabric from the back of each block before beginning. Finishing the quilt with the very narrow binding of backing fabric rolled to the front was a new experience for me. Trimming of the front, batting, and backing prior to rolling the edge proved to be a bit tricky. Once done, however, rolling and stitching the edge were relatively easy.