Evening Star or Eight- pointed Star

NB. Revised post (March 18, 2020)
In the original post, I wrote: "I've been researching the name of the block. Like it's often the case with blocks, it has several different names, but it looks like the most common is Ohio Star."


I was wrong. A good friend of mine - who's a gold mine of knowledge on patchwork and quilts - tells me, that this is NOT an Ohio Star block, but an Evening Star or Eight-pointed Star block.


The photo (and my quilt) is an Evening Star/four patch block that is: 4 by 4 squares (see right outline) while Ohio Star is a  nine patch block: 3 by 3 squares (left outline) and the difference from the two is quite obvious. I stand corrected.

If you're interested in the subject, there are several online articles on block names and of course millions of pages with blocks. One of the better articles are written by Laurette Carroll, a quilt maker and collector from California: "Quilt Pattern Names" At the end of the article you'll find several references to books on block names and designs.


Now it's production time:

Couchpeanut's Throw Quilt

My current project is a throw quilt for  my daughter (aka Couchpeanut). She wants a classic quilt made from patchwork blocks. We went through my quilt book library and ended up with a design inspired by the cover of one of my old, favorite quilt booklets:
"Calico and Beyond: The Use of Patterned Fabric in Quilts" by Roberta Horton.
I bought the book back in the 1980ies and it taught me valuable lessons on the use of patterned fabric. Lessons that I still draw on in each and everyone of of my current works.


The book is still on sale at Amazon and I can highly recommend it. There might be newer books on the subject, but this one covers all the basics. If you know of newer book, that you can recommend, I will be grateful if you post them as a comment to this post. Thanks.

I'm sooo happy that she chose a scrap quilt, I would have been bored to death if she had wanted me to make that many blocks had they all been identical. Now there is a little creative period when choosing the fabrics for each block. Not two blocks are alike and the center squares are all unique. There's a few (2 or 3) fabric I cut more than one squares from, but they are from the category, Roberta Horton calls "wonder prints", prints where you can't identify the print rapport.

Block chosen and fabric color palette too: beige, sand, grey, brown, deep red, dust blue, we had to decide the overall design of the blocks: straight or on point?



I made a small "mock up", so we could discuss overall design, color palette and especially a strategy for the background colors for the stars.

Quilts, quilts, quilts...

OK. With Flickr accessed and working, I'll proceed to what was my intentions: to focus this blog on my "retirement project": quilting :)
Back in the 19th century, I quilted a lot, but when I got a full time job at UC Syd, I put all my fabric and threads aside and stopped cutting up fabric into small pieces and stitch them together to large pieces of fabric. Lolz

I stored my fabric in the basement when I moved to Haderslev and when I decided to take up quilting again and carried my boxes with fabric up from the basement I found out that storing fabric in basements was not a good idea: they all smelled musty. Bwadr!
I washed, dried and ironed it all. It took several hour a day for a full month. My husband and daughter took pity on me and did a lot of ironing. Bless them!

Then out to buy storage chests with basket drawers, so I could store the fabric so I could easily overview them and so that they didn't get smelly again. To be completely sure, I distributed small bags of lavender in the baskets.



My walk-in closet got converted to a storeroom with a wardrobe and my height adjustable computer table got converted to a quilters workbench.


After some month, I was ready to go..............

New name on the block

Yay!! I got access to my Flickr account today. It's actually amazing that Flickr support (aka Carol) took so much time and effort to bridge the gap between securing users from being "hacked" and supporting a maiden in distress. Lolz
Thanks bunches, Carol from Flickr support!!

Now I'll better get my account cleaned up. There are a lot of duplicates and pictures, that I actually don't see the point in keeping. It'll be a fun job, there are a lot of memories hidden there....

Some really funny like this with the title: Mammarazzi(!!) marking how proud I was of my new Sony Ericsson phone with camera :)

I've also - after long considerations - decided to write in English from now on. I started posting in English as part of the process of getting my Flickr account back/proving my identity, but I've decided to continue in English. There's 2 reasons (hopes) for that decision: I may have a better chance for getting a couple of readers and I may become better writing English.

That decision created a  problem: the original title of the blog was "faurholt's fumleri", which is completely untranslatable: "faurholt's fumblery" doesn't have the same punch. After long considerations I decided for "BlockHead" and to change my profile pic to an old treasured blockhead that I own. It belonged to an 80+ year old lady, who rented a flat in my house in Copenhagen back in the 1970ies. She never married, but lived in her parents house and worked as a millner all her life. The blockhead has traces of the numerous needle stitches she has done. I always think of the now deceased little old lady with the blood red nail polish and the thin lady cigar when I see the blockhead in my windowsill. She may not have kids and grand children to remember her, but the blockhead and I do.

Flickr and forgotten login

I joined Flickr way back in 2005 and for several years I used it intensely for my digital photos. I have 838 photos there. That's not a lot today, but please remember, the first-generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007! Before that, you had to have a special camera to be able to take digital photos.

As my blog "Du er, hvad du tagger" shows, I was teaching Web 2.0 technologies for years and introduced hundreds of students and teachers to Blog, Flick, del.i.cious (social bookmarking and a lot of other social medias. That was a great time of great enthusiasm, that I remember with great pleasure.

Now that I'm retired, I want to use Flickr again but quelle horreur!! I can't access it because the email I used was a corporate email that has been discarded by my (now former) employer, UC Syd.  I contacted Flick and hoped they could help. I remembered Flickr as always helpful, but it has been owned by several different companies during it's lifetime. I contacted Flickr with my fingers crossed.

A few days after the usual auto-we-have-received-your-mail-response, I was contacted by Carol, who asked me for verification of my identity as the Lis Faurholt, who owns Liz@rt's Flickr photos. It's not an easy process, but Carol is extremely helpful at the same time as she is fulfilling the corporate rules on securing their customers materials. I find it hard to convince Carol, but do respect her reasons for trustworthy verification.

I'm still hoping.....