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8″ Star Block
It’s pretty isn’t it, this little patchwork star block? I made it this morning. Ahem. Yes, I know…what another new project?! You don’t know the half of it; this is just one other new project!!! I blame Paula over at The Sassy Quilter for this one. Entirely!!!! Browsing her blog the other day I spotted this…
Amy at Diary of A Quilter has been running this quilt-along for a couple of months now. There will be 16 blocks to make in total and so far 6 designs have been published, two per month. Paula invited her readers to play catch-up with her, and well, I couldn’t let her do it on her own now could I?!
I do have another reason for joining in though: practice. I’ve been feeling the need to hone my machine piecing skills lately because some of the ideas I have for future quilt designs might require more precision. And, as I’ve never made a sampler quilt before, it seemed like a good opportunity to get in a little practice without having to dedicate my whole life to the project.
This first block was designed by Sherri of A Quilting Life. I’ve pieced it in just three fabrics: the green rosy design is by Tilda (which you can buy locally and online from my friend Sally’s lovely quilt shop Coast and Country Crafts), the corner triangles are in Liberty Tana Lawn and the background is just a bit of plain cream scrap I had hanging around. It looks deceptively simple, but if you want it to look neat and precise you’re going to need some patience! And probably an unpicker Image may be NSFW.
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(If you’re anything like me!)
I plan to publish a separate tutorial on my ‘half square triangle’ technique in the next day or two (it’s taken me a lot of experimentation, but I’ve finally developed a way that works well for me), so today I thought I’d share tips on how I fussy cut the centre square. It’s a great (simple) method for larger squares like this:
Fussy cutting the central square with a ruler
You will need:
- Cutting mat
- Quilting ruler
- Pencil
- Rotary cutter or scissors
- Fabric with a definable motif
The cut square is 4.5″ which includes the seam allowance.
Step 1
Choose your fabric and lay a piece with your preferred motif face down on the cutting mat. If it’s difficult to see your motif on the back of the fabric, it’s just fine to work on the front. Ensure your quilt ruler is longer than the piece of fabric you lay on the mat at both the top and the bottom (this is important, though not so clear in my photos, sorry! Basically you need to ensure your ruler protrudes over the bottom piece of the fabric the same way it does over the top in this photo).
By eye, try and get the right hand edge of your motif to line up with the vertical lines on your cutting mat, keeping the straight grain of the fabric in line with the grid. (You might want to reverse this if you’re left handed). Lay your ruler over the top. Now shimmy your ruler to the right a bit so that you have 1/4″ seam allowance to the right of the motif (I’ve marked this with a red star on the photo). Square up your ruler with the grid on your mat, checking that the lines correspond at the top and the bottom. Mark with a pencil (or cut with a rotary cutter, if you’re sure you’ve got it right!).
Step 2
Now you want to mark a parallel line 4.5″ to the left of your first line. This is easily done by laying a line on your ruler that is 4.5″ from the left edge over your first pencil line and drawing a line down the left edge.
Step 3
Follow the same process for the two remaining sides. After I marked these last two lines I decided I didn’t actually like the vertical placement of the motif in the square so decided to drop the lines down about an inch as you can see in image 3a. By doing this I’ve lifted the rose into a better position within the square.
Step 4
Once your happy with the placement of your motif use your ruler and a rotary cutter to cut along your pencil lines. Turn over, ta da! You’re all done Image may be NSFW.
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As you can see from the first photo, fussy cutting like this made sure I got the best bit of the flowers in the centre of the star. I’m one happy bunny!
If you want to fussy cut some hexagon shapes, check out my tutorial for details of how to go about that too!
Off to start on next week’s block now…it’s a busy one!
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The post Virtual Quilting Bee 1 – The Star Block appeared first on Dawn Chorus Studio.