My love affair with Big Stars

I’ve mentioned before that one of my first classes was with Alex Anderson making all the stars in her book, Simply Stars. The first day included Sawtooth Stars. She said that they were the best stars to make up quickly to do a lot of filling. The header quilt was made from her class and subsequent classes that I taught on star-making.

This was my first big star quilt. The idea for it was in a quilting book that was a compilation of quilts in magazines. I was asked by the LQS to develop and teach it as a class. I did, and did, and did.
If you are like me and it makes you crazy to cut homespuns not on square, the most time spent on this quilt is pressing fabric for cutting, pulling on the bias until it lays square in both directions. I made a cutting diagram for this one so you could cut it all from fat quarters, 8 light and 8 dark. Only the border requires yardage. Even the binding is made from scraps from the fat quarters. You really can make this quilt in a day, even the cutting.

The next Big Star was made from fabric collected on my first vacation with DH, only we were just dating then. We did a week long trip down Rt. 49 – the gold trail – in CA, and visited every quilt shop along the way. DH models 1895-9, so all these trains are steam locomotives. I used the block Best of All for this one. The corner stars are 16”, to give you an idea of size. The top and bottom border are made from 6” squares. (If you use that tiny sashing between the border stars, you don’t have to match points.) This made it fit the top of his queen waterbed.

I did a lot of fussy cutting on this quilt so all the pieces faced the right direction. The pieces in the middle of the flying geese can be read straight on – all the way around. This created no small amount of frustration, as I should have purchased more fabric to cut it this way.


Buffalo quilt cropped full sizeDisney babies big starheartstringsnavychevronsquilt 1sawtooth star completed top heartstringsstevie's blockugly big star center
These are some of the Big Stars I've made since the top one. They make good baby quilts, extend the size of HeartStrings quilts when there’s not enough blocks,back art from left-overs, and are ideal when you need to make a really big quilt with a lot of punch. The top brown one is 120” square, and makes a wonderful bedspread size for a king bed. When you go this big, I recommend wool batting for weight control.

Tomorrow you will see my latest Big Star over at Quiltmaker Magazine’s blog, Quilty Pleasures http://www.quiltmaker.com/blogs/quiltypleasures/ . It is my first Scrap Squad project. I hope you’ll check it out.


Happy quilting,
Becky

Comments

Looking forward to you post! I didn't peak.....wants dot read it fresh on the site!!
Kath said…
How I would have enjoyed your class Becky!
Barb in Mi said…
Saw your absolutely fabulous scrap squad quilt! Wow! And so great to see your 'journey' to the final design! Thanks for sharing!
Torteach said…
Do you have the Disney star pattern available? I totally love it! and am not at all sure how to make since I've just begun quiltmaking/machine embroidery. Thanks for any help that you can give!

janet
Those are some amaze-balls star quilts! Very inspiring!

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