Wind star quilt-Mariners compass

My new quilt will be a medallion quilt with a wind rose or compass as it is more commonly known as the center medallion.  The wind rose comes from a 1492  Portuguese cartographers map by Jorge de Aguiar.  Prior to stumbling across the image of the map I never gave much thought to cartography or the images depicted on them. As I began searching this wind rose  to get a clear public domain photo that I could use to make a pattern I was intrigued by what I read and sought more information.  Even if geogrphy isn’t your thing, for a well written article that I wish I had found first :  https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/januaryfebruary/feature/the-cone-africa-took-shape-in-lisbon.

This version of a compass appealed  to me because it was different, I am a fan of different and I also really liked the scalloped design around the outside.  All of the  compass blocks I’ve made or viewed have long spikes with the inner sections overlapping the outer sections. They are really cool to look at but are a pain to quilt with the ant hill seams. The colors were also appealing to me and I tried matching  the fabric to the photo with the exception of the green scallops. I think gray scallops to match the photo would have been too much gray but I am questioning choosing green now. The rest of the quilt will be blue and natural muslin. A world map fabric would have been a great background fabric, however they are limited on design choices.

This pattern, like For the love of geese will have no curved piecing or Y seams and will be paper pieced.

Thank you to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University and Mary Ellen who was so kind in our correspondence .  To view the map in its entirety for free: http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3433718 . A high resolution digital file can also be purchased for $3 by contacting the library.