star quilt along, week 1

Welcome to week one of the star quilt along.

A few items of business before we get started with our block for today:

-The quilt top is 85" square.

-It consists of 12 setting blocks and 13 star blocks.

-Each block is 12.5" unfinished, resulting in a 12" finished block.

-A quarter inch seam allowance is used throughout the project.

-About the fabric: for the background, I would buy around 6-7 yards for this project. I haven't kept track of how much I have used for this quilt, but if you are worried about running out, get a few extra yards. Buy something you love, so if you have tons extra, you can use it for another project. I used quilters only cotton from JoAnn's in the color parchment. (I buy nearly a bolt at a time.) For the pink parts of the quilt I used fabrics from my stash. Fat quarters and fat eighths work well for these pieces. For the setting blocks, I used at least a yard of fabric, but less than 2 yards.

Now on to our block...

cut one square 7 1/4" from the background fabric

cut it in half diagonally twice, making quarter square triangles

cut one square 3 7/8" from the background fabric
cut six squares 3 1/2" from the background fabric

cut five squares 3 7/8" from the colored fabric

take one square background fabric and mark a line in pencil from one corner to the other. pin that background fabric to a colored square of fabric, right sides together. sew two seams- one on either side of the pencil line using a quarter inch seam.

cut apart on the pencil line.

press open and this will form 2 squares

take the remaining 4 squares of colored fabric, cut them in half on the diagonal

to make 8 half square triangles

layout as shown

I added a few close up shots on how to sew this segment together. This will also be used in several future blocks in the quilt along.








Square up your block-trim to exactly 12.5". This is an important step, so later, when you are assembling your blocks, they will all match in size. This makes the assembly of the quilt much easier.

If you have any questions, I will attempt to answer them in the comments section.

If you are joining in, leave me a comment, and I will add your name to the sidebar and a link to your blog, if you have one.

Thanks for quilting along with me.