Saturday, September 29, 2012

Woven Star block tutorial


Woven Star Block

12” block (finished)




Materials:
Background fabric: four 4.5 inch squares & eight 2.5 inch squares
Star fabric: four pieces 2.5 x 4.5 and four pieces 2.5 x 6.6 inches

You can use all the same fabric for the stars, but would lose the woven effect. You still get it with just two fabrics, or go scrappy and use a different fabric for each piece (like I did)

Draw a line on the diagonal of the 2.5 inch squares.

Lay out the eight 2.5 inch strips (4.5 and 6.5 inches long), right sides up. On the longer strips place the square with the drawn line going from the top left corner to the right lower corner. On the shorter strips, place the square with the drawn line going from the top right corner to the left lower corner:
 


Stitch on the drawn lines and trim off the corners:
Now, lay your background squares and the star points out in the way you want them to look:
You do this because you want to press differently for each “small block”.  For points on block #’s 1 & 3, press seams towards the triangle. On blocks 2 & 4, press towards the strip. This allows for nesting of seams when sewing them all together and reduces bulk in the seams.
The picture below shows the pressing on block 3 (right) and block 4 (left):
Sew the smaller strips to the background squares:
Press seams towards the star points. Go back to your layout with them to match up your long points. I do it this way so I don’t mix my little blocks up:
Then you sew the long star points to the block and press seams to the star points again:
Lay the little blocks out one more time…
Sew them together in pairs, pressing the seams in opposite directions so they will nest in the center when you sew the two pairs together: And you’re done!
This is such a pretty block and so easy to make. They look equally good laid out in straight rows or on point. Here is a lap quilt I made for my sister with the blocks on point:
 
Here is another I just recently finished. The blocks are smaller - I shrunk them down to 8 inches and lined them up around the outside. This top has already won three 1st place ribbons in local fair competitions:
 


 
Well, it seems that I'm not doing something right. I created "pages". One is Home and one is Tutorials and another is Patterns.  I thought I posted this block tutorial under Tutorials. Nope, it's a blog post and ended up on the "Home" page.
So until I can figure out what I'm doing, those pages are now hid and instead of a blog entry you get a tutorial for a block pattern. Enjoy!


Wednesday, September 26, 2012

First Buttons!

See over there on the left? And over there on the right, under my profile info? Buttons!!!
I confess I didn't have the first clue as to how I would get them there. Anyhting I tried was a html mistake. Or something like that.

Well, I'm having a blast with the Glorious Autumn Block Party and I wanted to show off the "button" for this. Michele Foster of the Quilting Gallery blog over there on the left has brought a huge pool of talented designers together and (If I remember this right) are giving us participants something crazy like 45 block design tutorials in 15 days. Or maybe it's 30 days. It's late, I'm getting old and don't remember a whole lot anymore. I have a bit of a crazy schedule right now so am downloading the block patterns and saving them to a special folder (so I don't forget about them!) to work on later. Also, I want to see all the designs before deciding how to lay out my quilt. Medallion style or sampler style? I dunno yet, but it will come to me. Sooner or later...

OOPS I rambled... What I was winding up to say is that darling Michele emailed me a link that took me to some spot on her blog, which provided step by step instructions to add these fun, cute buttons to my blog. Her instructions are idiot proof. I managed to do it! One of these days I'll figure out how to add a link right in here like everyone else does so you can click for more words of wisdom, tutorials or eye candy.

I have a tutorial coming up too. I typed this up for a dear friend so she could make these really pretty blocks. I've been obsessesd with it for months now and it shows up in a few quilts I've worked on this year, including the quilt I've alreadyposted a picture of. The only picture I've posted so far.

I have some block patterns coming as well. I designed these for QOV - Canada, to make use of Northcott's lovely Stonehenge line, designed especially for Quilts of Valour, in the US and Canada. The Canadian line is called Oh Canada! and besides being based on the lovely Stonehenge design, we've got moose and maple leaves! So those are coming, and I'd love you to download one or all six of them and make a quilt for a soldier, in Canada or the USA.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Here I Go...

For anyone who stumbles across this...
This is not going to look like much for awhile. First, I forget how to do this stuff, add gadgets and just about everything else...
I've created it, that's a good start isn't it?
The thing is, I offered advice during a QAL deal and one of the other participants took my advice and made herself a blog post and tutorial out of it. Well hell. I wasn't impressed since she did not ask my permission. Yea she gave me credit (if popping my first name in there is credit) before using my words exactly and putting in her own pictures of the process.
Well, I'm not going to be so nice anymore, I'll direct people to MY blog and MY instructions/advice/how-to tutorial from now on.

Another reason for blogging is I finally entered my quilts into competition, and won with everything I entered. This little sneak peak is of a top only and it already has three 1st place ribbons to it's credit. I'm thinking about writing a pattern to go with it...