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Dad´s Lone Star has been featured a couple of times recently in The Daily Blog, most recently in the photo with Gregory Case. We get questions - so here are the answers.

Many of you know that my dad, Richard Tims, began quilting the same time I did in 1991. The week we started our first quilt, neither of us knew the other was doing so. Yes, that´s weird!

Dad´s first quilt was a Broken Star. TQS Member WiAndee has a beautiful example of a traditional Broken Star quilt. A Broken Star is not generally recommended as a first quilt, but my dad´s mother made three of them (one for each of her children) when she was 85 years old. Dad decided if she could do that at 85, he could do it at 65. I don´t have an image of his first quilt, but you can see it in Episode 211, in Segment 4. In this special field piece, dad is working on a quilt we call Papaw´s Choice. The pattern for Papaw´s Choice is on our TQS Projects Page.

Years later dad decided to do a Lone Star quilt, similar to the Broken Star, but without the surrounding diamonds. See a beautiful Lone Star made by TQS Member altazimuth. Dad was attempting to cut individual diamonds from my hand-dyed scraps. When I learned this, Justin and I immediately went to the dye room and dyed yardage for him to use so he could utilize the much easier strip pieced method for making a Lone Star. While dad was working on all the diamond units, I designed the setting for the large central lone star. Mom and dad both helped cut out the ´Ricky Feathers´ applique. I stitched the applique with double blanket stitching and outline bobbin embroidery, assembled the quilt top, and machine quilted it on my Bernina. The quilt finihed at 93" square. It won a third place in the 2004 IQA show Houston and a second place at the 2005 AQS show in Paducah, KY. It also won a first prize at Quilts on the Waterfront in Duluth, MN. Could this be the first father/son quilt to ever win a prize in an international quilt competition?

The dark portions of the quilt utilize my "caveman dark-hand-dyed fabrics", but the luminous, almost mystical parts of the star are created from my "caveman pastel-hand-dyed fabrics". Most quilters will breeze right by these iridescent light fabrics because they don´t draw you in (just as we skip over the lights in our quilt shops), but when used properly, it is a glorious background ´light´.

This quilt was recently featured on the front cover of Machine Quilting Unlimited. The quilt would never be for sale, but a limited edition of large, signed and numbered giclee´ fine art prints are available through my website. A giclee´ fine art print (pronounced zhee clay´) is created using archival inks and archival paper. If you ever see one in person you will think you are seeing a real quilt behind glass - the printing is so detailed.

Dad is now 81 and quilts almost every day. Mom (rickysmom) and dad (rickysdad) will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on August 7th.