Edited to add: You can click on the picture below and follow the link or click here to see the video.
Oh wow! I love stars and I LOVE big stars even more. I was intrigued by the way she makes half-square triangles I've never done them this way. And before you know it I got my butt out of bed and was down in my sewing room cutting fabric. Here's what I got done....
I spent a ton of time trying to decide what fabrics to use. The video uses a layer cake and I have a bunch of layer cakes but none talked to me. However my Debbie Mumm fabrics were quite chatty and I grabbed some. I decided on a "theme" of using of my busy background fabrics since I have a bunch of these and they aren't always easy to work into other designs. Now these blocks are BIG BIG BIG.... they finish 24".
Can you see the 6" ruler on this block? and how it fills my cutting mat?
Here's another close-up of the fabrics - a busy background paired with other busy fabrics. Its going to be a busy quilt and you know I LOVE busy - LOL! I plan to sash the blocks with other busy backgrounds and use the snowball technique to create shoo-fly blocks in between the stars.
Now this method of making HST is pretty quick but I have a few thoughts on the construction. I am spray starching the squares before I sew and cut them. I used a scant 1/4" seam around the outside of the blocks so I could square them up with my Tucker Trimmer - I love that tool. When you make the HST this way you do have the bias on the outside edges of the units, so I think the starch helps stabilize the bias and you need to handle them gently. That said, it is nice for this old dog to learn new tricks.
I have all the fabrics cut for these blocks (those squares on the design wall are the other backgrounds I'm going to use). I'm hoping to get a little time here and there this week to sew up some more blocks. Hope there is some sewing time in your week!
Happy stitching-
carol fun
