Sarah's Stars

That's me!

My twitter/bloggy friend Julie asked me about this block I made for the lovely Tacha for theAnother Quilting Bee 1 swap group, so I thought I'd do a quickie tutorial for her and the rest of you too. I was just winging it when I made this block for Tacha, so I had to measure the finished block to determine the sizes of each piece.



This block is my own design using Maverick Star and classic 9-patch components. Please don't use it in items to sell, and if you do make it, I'd love if you sent some blog traffic my way. New friends are always welcome!

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I'll try my best to clarify.

Enjoy!

Sarah's Stars Block - This block finished ast 16.5 inches with seam allowance. It's a biggie.

To make this block you will need to know how to make a 9-patch block and a Maverick Star. That tutorial has already been done, so I'll send you here to get it. I will use the colours in the layout pictures when referring to each piece.

Here is a picture of the block layout.



It consists of:
4 large Maverick Stars
1 small Maverick Star
4 small 9-patch blocks
Strips to connect them all together

Start by making these block components.
• 4 large stars using a 2.5 inch square for each of the 9 segments (you can do a fussy cut centre if you want, I added strips around to make my fussy cuts big enough for the block centres)
• 1 small star using a 1.5 inch square for each of the 9 segments
• 4 small 9-patch blocks using a 1.5 inch square for each of the 9 segments

Out of green fabric cut:
• 2 pieces 3.5" x 1"
• 2 pieces 4.5" x 1"

Out of light blue fabric cut:
• 8 pieces 6.5" x 1"

Note: the green and blue fabric strips are all 1 inch wide, my picture is not to scale)

Out of pink fabric cut:
• 4 squares 3.5" x 3.5"

Let's get started!



Row 1 Assembly
1. Sew pink square to the 9-patch block and attach the blue strips on each long side of this unit.
2. Attach one maverick star block to each side.
3. Make sure that the pink square is at the top of this row.




Row 2 Assembly
1. Sew the short green pieces on either side of the small star, then add the top and bottom pieces.
2. Sew pink square to the 9-patch block and attach the blue strips on each long side of this unit. Do this two times.
3. Attach the three sections together following the diagram. Make sure the pink squares are on either end of this row.




Row 3 Assembly
1. Sew pink square to the 9-patch block and attach the blue strips on each long side of this unit.
2. Attach one maverick star block to each side. Make sure that the pink square is at the bottom of this row.
Sew rows together.

Voilà! You're done!

If you make this block I'd love to see it! I know that you won't all be rushing into your sewing rooms to make this, but if you do, please post photos in the flickr group I just made.

Makeover in Progress

Stay tuned! My blog makeover is in the works.

The very talented Amy from Patchwork Folio has been hard at work.

Changes to come soon!

Now if only those people from What Not to Wear would redo my wardrobe...

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone has a great day today!



This wonderful spooky quilt was made for me by the amazingly talented upstatelisa last year in a swap. I'm so glad we got matched up, she has become a good friend.

Don't eat too much...

DQS7 Received!

I bet you were all wondering if I received a doll quilt in the Flickr Doll Quilt Swap.

I did!



It had a long voyage to make, but it arrived to its new loving home last week.



This beautiful quilt was made by Ralitza (Domoshar) completely by hand!



All hand stitched, hand quilted, embroidered!



Check out the story about it here.



Yippeee! I love my new pink and orange quilt!

I Won!

I can't believe I won a prize in the Blogger's Quilt Festival! I'm still in shock! Thank you to Lisa for sending me an email this morning notifying me of this wonderful event!

I won a blog makeover from Amy! She's the lady behind the lovely blog button for the festival! How cool is that!

Here's what I won:

To celebrate the launch of PatchworkFolio I am offering a complete blog makeover to include a custom header, 5 sidebar title buttons, custom background, fonts, colors, favicon and post divider, coordinating post title font and custom 'email me' button. I will work with your current platform (i.e. Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress or other) and restrictions may apply depending upon your plan level and options available with your service. If you don't have a blog but wish to enter the drawing I will get you set up on Blogger's free platform and include all of the above (a $150 value).

Which means my blog will be all prettied up! yippee! Thank you to everyone involved in the festival!

Blogger's Quilt Festival - "My Minny Muu" February 2009

This is my entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

I made this quilt for me in February of this year but had yet to take photos of it. I was hoping to take some lovely photos outside this week, but it's been raining. So the giant table in the laundry room of our apartment building, will have to do. I thought of standing on the table to get a better angle, but they have surveillance cameras and I'm clumsy. So just a bad idea.



This quilt was an adventure that began on Flickr. While strolling around, I came across this and this and this photo of amazingly cute Minny Muu fabric by Lecien. I told everyone who would listen (and some who were just pretending to),about the cutest fabrics that I found, with little strawberries, random french words, mice and cheese, little teddy bears holding their own little bears...I could go on and on(and I'm sure I did). Just imagine all the blank stares from non-quilters.



So one Friday evening around 12am (I guess it was Saturday morning), I made it my mission to find this fabric online and purchase some. Immediately -if not sooner.

There were a few online stores that carried yardage, but I really wanted a little bit of each of the fabrics. I needed every print, in every colour. How could you leave one out!

So I created a table in Excel that had each store along the side and the prints along the top. I made check marks in the boxes to keep track. This was my plan to buy as many of the prints as possible, while spending the least on shipping. My Mom is still laughing at me about the Excel sheet.

Then around 2:30am, I came across Honeysuckle Cottage and low and behold they had layer cakes of the fabric (they still do!). One 10 inch square of each of the prints in the collection. I struck gold!! The only real issue is that I'm in Canada, and this shop is in Australia. But hey, they had the fabric. So I placed an order. I think it came to $60 Canadian. I didn't care.



While waiting the super long time for this stuff to make the trek from the Land Down Under to the Great White North, I noticed that the Fat Quarter Shop (in Texas) was also selling sushi rolls of Minny Muu, but there were no pictures of them unrolled, so I had no idea what was in them. I didn't care. I ordered one red, and one blue and some very cute dots to hopefully match. Oh and some sprinkle fabric (not pink like the link but the same print in white), 'cause who knows, maybe I'll change my mind about the dots. I'm sure you see how a fabric stash can develop with this purchasing strategy. While browsing Fat Quarter Shop's site, I fell in love with a pattern in Little Charmers 6 for a very cute table runner by Anka's Treasures.

Once all my goodies arrived, I decided to use the table runner pattern to make the quilt. I made the table runner top 4 times, and used them as 4 giant blocks, and then devised a layout to incorporate the giant blocks.

Most of the top of this quilt was made while on a Girls Crafting/Quilting getaway with friends. It was very fun! And being one who has a hard time focusing in group situations, I spend a lot of time taking these things apart, and re-sewing them together.



Full-on photos to come. When the sun arrives.

Check out the rest of the wonderful quilts in the festival here:

It's been a great mail week...

I received the prize I won from Anina over at Twiddletails Blog.



My tenmaketwo blocks from Aneela, and check out the lovely extras. Heather Ross fabrics from Munki Munki PJ's.



Some lovely Malabrigo Yarn that I bought from a Ravelry person. This will be a hat.



Thank you everyone!!!!

In the making category.

I made this kitty for a special little girl.



And I'm hoping to finish this scarf for myself before the winter hits.