Help The Octagon House with an Old-Fashioned Quilting Bee!
Throughout 2022, the Octagon House in Hudson, Wisconsin will be creating a quilt and you can help! Through July we’ll be collecting Lemoyne Star quilt squares made to 9 inches finished. Make as few or as many as you’d like! We’d love to have all the community participate! Once we have the blocks, we’ll assemble them into a quilt, and will set up a traditional quilting frame. Anyone who wishes to hand quilt on the project will be welcome!
The Octagon House will be hosting classes in July and August to help anyone who wishes to learn the art of hand quilting, and there will be regular hand quilting on the 4th Saturdays and Tuesday afternoons during the Farmer’s market season.
Not a sewer or a quilter? You can purchase raffle tickets, as the historical society will be raffling the quilt off to help support its ongoing history efforts at the Octagon House. Own a piece of modern History!
Quilt Block Requirements:
Lemoyne Star pattern (rotary cutting instructions, template instructions, and foundation piecing instructions are available from the Octagon House), 9 inches finished.
Fabric Requirements: Please use bleached muslin for the space outside the star and reproduction fabrics from the 19th and early 20th century to make the blocks. Fabrics can be purchased from several shops in the twin cities, or online at https://www.reproductionfabrics.com/ Other places like Etsy, fat quarter shop, and more will also have these available. Search for Civil War reproduction fabric, Jo Morton, Di Ford, and Little House on the Prairie to start your search. If you don’t have these fabrics, or are unsure of purchasing, packets will be available at the Octagon House for pickup to use.
Y Seam tutorials: The Lemoyne Star uses a technique of inset seams, or as most folks call them – Y Seams. There are several tutorials available online, but the 2 that seem the best are Jinny Beyer and Kaye Wood. Jinny Beyer: Perfect Set-In Seams (Y-Seams) Kaye Wood: Y Seam Trick - Kaye Wood Slumber Party - Episode 7 While Jinny highlights using her tool for the dots for her dot-to-dot method, you can also just use a quarter inch ruler, or a line from an index card (from blue line to blue line is ¼”)
Assembly Instructions: An excellent tutorial is provided here: https://lavenderquilting.com/2018/11/26/le-moyne-star/
Ignore the cutting instructions as you’ll be following the ones from the templates provided by the Octagon House, but the walkthrough on assembly is fantastic.
Return the finished square(s) to the Octagon House. If you aren’t close by, you can mail them to:
Octagon House 1004 Third Street Hudson, Wisconsin 54016
We’d like to receive the finished blocks by July 15.
More information will be forthcoming about the Quilting classes and quilting bee once the quilt is assembled. If you would like to be informed of updates on hand quilting dates and times, the hand quilting classes, and other information, please email info@patchesoftime.com to be added to the communications list.