Ceredigion Star Quilt

I don't do replicas but prefer to say that I am "inspired by" or make "in the spirit of".  Anyway it is impossible to replicate a Welsh wool quilt because the fabrics used then are no longer made.

There was a period in our history when our quilts were entirely homegrown;  the woollen cloth was manufactured in our mills and made from the fleeces of the thousands of sheep grazing our hilly countryside. Clumps of this wool were often gathered from the hedgerows by the quilters and cleaned and carded to use as padding in their quilts.  Sometimes the cleaning process wasn't too thorough and many quilts were ruined when washed because - well I will leave it to your imagination!

I saw this picture on the Internet a while ago -

It was from an exhibition of Welsh Quilts from Ceredigion Museum held at the Green Mountain College in Vermont.  I had never seen this quilt before and immediately thought that I could do a scaled down version and make it into one of my Little Welsh Quilts. The original quilt was made of woollen cloth but I used cotton fabric from my stash.  I based the colours on the picture but when I eventually saw the original quilt I hadn't quite got it right.  Instead of blue surrounding the central red star, it should have been dark green!  But hey, it's not a replica so it doesn't matter!

I made up my own quilting design because as my quilts are small there is less room to do the large swirling patterns of full sized bed quilts, so one has to choose motifs carefully so as not to distort the patchwork. Now when I look at the finished quilt I feel that I should have done a bit more quilting, but it's difficult to go back and as I have a stack of little quilts waiting to be quilted it may never get done?