"Pieces of Eight" for Project Quilting Challenge "8 Is Great"

After many hours at the sewing machine, and who knows how many yards of thread, I've completed my submission for the first challenge in the eighth season of Persimon Dreams Project Quilting, hosted by the talented Kim Lapacek:

Pieces of Eight

 

Being one of the “eight-iest” images out there, my husband helped me select an eight-pointed Missouri Star.  Greg really has the best eye for design in our family, so I generally defer to his advice on these matters.  (Love you, Dear.)

My S.A.B.L.E produced several prints with “eight-y” design elements:  four aqua and four blue.  For negative space, four white and four light gray prints were chosen.

Running with the 45-degree angles angle, which produces the Star in Missouri Star, eight triangles were sewn into half-square triangles, bearing a 4-inch basic block.  The resulting quilt is 32-inches on each side.

Each block's eight-pointed center was emphasized with a circle to make the seams read as radii.  For more structure, I quilted in the ditch through the block centers.  This produced eight chains of eight circles.

But wait - there's more!  The “eight-y” mathematics of the quilt can be summarized in this list of eight different features:  

    512 total triangle pieces (the cube of 8)
    64 total quilt blocks (the square of 8)
    64 circles quilted 
    8 points in the Missouri Star
    8 pieces in each four-inch quilt block
    8 different aqua/blue fabrics
    8 different white/gray fabrics
    8-sided designs in some of the fabric prints.


With all of the eight-pointed block centers, especially in the high contrast sections, there was a bit of "quality control" required.  (Thank you again, Dear.)  Several blocks that didn't pass muster were re-sewn.

Without belaboring eight any further, here are the rest of the pics:

 

Thank you VERY much for reading this blog post.  May you all enjoy a happy and healthy 2017!

(Note to Kim Lapacek:  Could the next challenge theme please be "One"?)

Kimberly