behind the scenes with 2 quilting teachers – plans, projects, progress & procrastination
Moving back and forth from the Overseas Office to the Rural Office sometimes turns up the unexpected. This time several of Barbara’s unofficial collection of Really Small Quilts have surfaced and we thought you’d like to see one or two of them. The mini sampler above was made by Darlene Zimmerman who also made the teeny Sawtooth Star below –
A seaside charmer by Katharine Guerrier –
And a positively miniscule wholecloth by Margaret Davidson –
At C&B Towers and the Overseas Office the current working theme seems to be put all orphan blocks, sample blocks and bits, and UFOs to good use.
In the last few months Chris has resurrected and revived all manner of pieces that she had almost forgotten about and it has been very satisfying to make Something Unplanned out of them. The Photography Department has promised us that we will have pictures of these pieces to show in a future post.
Further south at the Overseas Office Barbara has been conjuring blocks for class samples out of scraps left over from other class samples and that has been a satisfying exercise too. For several years now the majority of class samples Barbara has made have had a similar colour palette, nearly always with a red print or prints included. The useful thing about this strategy is that, ultimately, all the samples should “go” together and can be arranged into some sort of sampler. This is not a new idea but it really does work very well and this year may be the start of arranging the contents of the sample bag. Here’s a quick glimpse of the current class sample plus one or two from 2022 –
This really is using up – the black print above featured in a quilt Chris made a LONG time ago and Barbara purloined the leftovers!
Back to sorting out pieces from the past!
It’s nearly the end of the year (how did that happen?) and we’ve reached the last few of our stellar blocks. These are more eight-pointed stars, somewhat akin to the Blazing Star blocks from last month. You can download the 12 inch patterns and blocks to colour for all the blocks featured today here – it is free remember)
We start with Key West
If you divide that up a bit you get Morning Star (we have dubbed this Morning Star 2 in the download – you’ll see why in a moment)
Take the centre points of Key West and add pointed corners to make April Star
If you then take those points and divide them you get Shadow Star
Divide just the corner points of April Star to make Star and Cone
Or make the centre points shorter (and thus fatter at the end) to make Guiding Star
Then we come to our other Morning Star – a Blazing Star / April Star / Key West with added bits!
But we couldn’t leave our stellar year without reminding you of the Tangled Star block
You can find a pattern to make a runner using this block over in our Payhip shop along with many other patterns for runners, quilts and table toppers.
We hope you have enjoyed our exploration of some of the multitude of star blocks – and please download the patterns (they are free) and play with the ‘block to colour’ pages – split up the various bits of the stars and design your own extra stellar blocks.
Browsing through the star blocks in BlockBase and Electric Quilt Chris came across a star called Star and Dot which looks a bit like a Blazing Star with bits missing. Further browsing produced a few more stars in the same family.
Let’s start with Star and Dot
Then add a few lines to make New Star
Or add spiked corners to make Blazing Star
Split those corners to make another version of Blazing Star
Change the corner and centre to make the Emerald block
Or add in lots of extras to make Optical Illusion
You can download the cutting instructions for all these blocks (12 inches) and blank blocks to colour here. You could also use the blank Star and Dot block to design a block of your own.
One of the blocks featured recently over on our Meadowside Designs blog was one called Thrifty – rather appropriate we felt in these times. It’s very simple – just lots of squares.
But you can make some interesting quilt designs with it by changing the lights and darks around
Then we thought what happens if you combine the 6 inch block from Meadowside with a 12 inch block? We called it Double Thrifty!
You can download the rotary cutting instructions for a 12 inch block here, for a 6 inch block from Meadowside Designs here and a Double Thrifty quilt to colour in and play with here.
Once you start moving the lights and darks around in a quilt design it gets very interesting indeed! As each Double Thrifty block is 24 inches you have a big quilt in no time at all. Here the quilts are set 3 x 3 instead of 4 x 4 (so 72 inches square instead of 96 inches) without borders.
To be very thrifty remember that you don’t have to use all the same fabrics throughout, just the same colours (more or less), so it worth hunting through the scrap bags to see what you can find.
We’ve another family of blocks to explore this month – the Eight-Pointed Stars, based on the LeMoyne Star
You can download cutting instructions for 12 inch blocks and blank blocks to play with here.
Taking Lemoyne Star as a starting point you could add some extra little points – we called this one Double Star
But those corner squares looked a bit plain so we added four-patches and, with our usual panache, called it Double Star Variation
Or you could start dividing the star points – to give a block often called Blazing Star
Another division of the star points and turning the corner squares into half-square triangles gives us EQ Star
The blocks above are all included in the download but there are lots of other variations to the basic star – dividing the star points in half lengthwise and adding half-square triangles in the corners gives us a block often called Silver and Gold
Using stripes – or strips – to make the star points can make Spiderweb Star
or Wrapped Star
If you go searching you will find dozens of other variations like these, or you can draw your own using the blank blocks in the download – the templates included should be enough to make many of the variations.
Over on our sister blog our wander through the block alphabet has reached S. So far we have posted six-inch patterns for Schoolgirl’s Puzzle
Shoofly (and Snowball – just a different way to colour the same block)
Simple Basket
Six-Grid Chain
and (as it’s October) two Spiderweb blocks.
There will be another two blocks next Saturday before we explore blocks beginning with T.
This month we’ve been playing on EQ and exploring the family of star blocks that include 54-40 or Fight. The starting point is a block simply known as Eight-Pointed Star
but then various other units get added to the plain squares in the centre and/or the corners to make new blocks. Starting with just triangle corners and then adding something to the centre we end up with these four – The Eight-Pointed Star, Judy in Arabia, Doris’ Delight and an un-named block from the 1920s
Just adding a more complicated centre to the starting block gives us Dove at the Window
And then if we add four-patch units to the centre and corner squares, then change the lights and darks around you get 54-40 or Fight, Garden Patch and Bird of Paradise
The star point units (often called Peaky and Spike – and Chris can never remember which triangle is Peaky and which Spike) are probably most accurately made with foundation piecing so these are included in the download pack. Rotary cutting the equilateral (background) triangle is nigh on impossible so the other method is to use templates – also included in the pack. These plus rotary cutting instructions and a block to colour for each block mentioned in this post can be downloaded here.
As usual we then had a ‘what happens if . . ?’ moment and divided up the Peaky and Spike units too, adding a square on point to the centre.
If you print out a few plain Eight-Pointed Star blocks from your download you too can grab a pencil and play at designing a new-to-you block – you are not obliged to make it!
We are continuing our jaunt through the alphabet with patterns for 6 inch blocks. This week we have reached Q. But are there any blocks beginning with Q? There are a few, many of them more suited to hand stitching over papers (which is very much not Chris’s ‘thing’) so we went for the one that can be rotary cut and machine pieced – Queens Petticoat.
But, looking at it, all Chris can see is a hat – with a feather!
What do you think?! How could you colour it so it looked more like a petticoat and less like a hat? Instructions, a block to colour, and more colourings of the block can be found on the Meadowside website.
We’ve chosen another old favourite to highlight this month – the Sawtooth Star.
There are a gazillion variations of this block – and no rules to say you can’t make up your own. You can download a block to colour or play with plus cutting instructions for many of the blocks featured – and there should be enough information in there to work out how to make lots of other blocks.
To start with you can add triangle corners and/or a diamond-in-a-square centre to make a Variable Star, a Variable Star Variation and Mosaic #19
Or you split that centre square into triangles to make Free Trade, Chisholm Trail, Sarah’s Choice, Barbara Frietschie, Anna’s Choice, Margaret’s Choice and and another Variable Star Variation
Some of the blocks look identical – apart from the way they are coloured and this has been enough to give them different names over the years.
Those centre triangles can be divided again to give us two very similar looking blocks – Martha Washington’s Star and Star and Pinwheels
Or how about dividing the centre (and maybe the corners) into smaller squares? This will give blocks such as Sawtooth 16-patch and Frayed Sawtooth
Sometimes a Sawtooth Star block has been used as the centre square – this gives us Rising Star and Eight Hands Around
Taking these a little further by dividing the corners and even the large triangles around the edges to make a Rising Star Variation, Free Trade, and Odd Fellows Chain and its Variation
What we haven’t yet done is split the small Flying Geese triangles – doing this gives us Aunt Addies Album and from there you can get Square and Stars and its Variation
Start playing with this exceptionally versatile block and see what you come up with – download the PDF to help you on your way.
chris & barbara quilts 