First the winner of yesterdays give-away is Deborah
She said
“I made my
first quilt with the help of my grandmother when I was a pre-school age child.
I took my first quilt class in 2005 and have been hooked ever since.”
Congratulations
Deborah, your e-mail is on its way. If you don’t get it post a comment here and
we will figure something out.
Feathered Star
Lesson 1: Old Fashioned Piecing.
For making
feathered star quilt blocks there is probably no better reference than Marsha
McCloskey’s book “Feathered Star Quilt Blocks:1”. You can find it at her
website www.marshamccloskey.com or
I have it in my Amazon Store (see right side bar). I think the best one to
learn to make is the 18.5” finished block. It has a lot of pieces but none of
them are so tiny that you will get super frustrated.
A couple of
things before we start: It’s a good idea for your thread to match your
background fabric because the “feathers” are pressed…gasp…OPEN so there is a
greater likelihood of your thread showing. Also, I like to use the Quilt-in-a
Day Triangle Square Up Ruler to make my feathers. I’ve found that I’m much more
accurate doing it this way. The one drawback is that when you press your
feathers open you have to get your fingers a little close to the iron…but hey,
if you’ve been following my appliqué tutorials you should have tough fingers by
now. I did a tutorial on this ruler back in my early blogging days (6 months
ago) and you can find it here (you might need to scroll down a bit).
Once I have
decided on my fabric choices I cut things out. The triangles and squares are
pretty straight forward. For the kites the first thing you do is cut a square
the recommended size. Then cut it once across the diagonal. To get the kite
shape you line up the diagonal with one edge of your ruler. The point of the
diagonal should be the length of the side away from the end of the ruler (4 7/8”
in this case). Cut off that little triangle and there’s your kite. Don’t forget
you need eight.
Cut along the diagonal to start the kite
Measure 4 7/8" along diagonal and cut to make kite
Your kite should look like this
For cutting octagons
you start with a 6 1/8” x 6 1/8” square. You will need to cut off the corners
to form the octagon. I make a mark ¾” along two sides and draw a line. This
line will be where you cut to get your octagon.
Make a mark 1 3/4" from this corner
Make another mark 1 3/4" from the same corner along the adjacent side
Draw a diagonal line and cut along this line
Repeat on remaining corners
For cutting the
diamond on the end of each star point you need a strip of fabric 1 ½” wide. Cut
off one corner off this strip at a 45˚ angle. From this cut edge measure 1 ½”
up and line the straight edge up with the ruler 45˚ line as shown. This cut
will give you the diamond. Don’t forget you need eight of these too.
Use 45 degree marks on ruler to get the best results
To make my
feathers I cut a 4” square of both my feather fabric and my background fabric.
I mark two diagonal lines and sew ¼” inch on each side of both lines. From here
I cut along each diagonal and 2” in from each side. This will give you 8
feather units. To square up the feathers I use my handy dandy ruler to make
each unit 1 ½” x 1 ½”. I turn the feather around and cut off my points. To
complete just press the seams open. (I have more pictures in this post)
Sew 1/4" from each diagonal line
Square should look like this before you cut it up
Align 1 1/2" mark on ruler to seam and trim, turn around to cut off corners using same ruler line
Press seams open
Be as precise
as you can with the feather step. It will be worth it later!
Tomorrow we
will get started sewing things together.
