Broken Star: The Final Steps...

I know again it's been a long time... But I have just been so busy with quilts!
Let's get back to the beautiful Broken Star.

After the piecing is complete and you have used your favorite technique for the basting is the quilting... I chose to match all the quilting thread with the fabric.
Using the matching thread I handquilted across the center of each diamond. Yes I quilted across each of the 1,568 diamonds... You can mark the diamond pieces if you wish, but it is just straight lines across a small area so it isn't necessary.

For the background areas I searched and searched until I found the perfect quilting design.

I marked all the background pieces before the quilting began, but it rubbed off on some of the blocks. Easy enough to remark with a chalk pencil though.

 The quilt ended up being king size and I have a queen sized bed, but it still worked for the pictures...

Of course you can't do all that work and not enter the quilt in the county fair... 

It did get 1st place, best of the bed size quilts went to a lady who hand pieced a similar quilt in blues...

Broken Star Part 1

Yes I have a quilting bucket list. The #1 quilt on that bucket list is a Broken Star. I have the Lone Star down pat so I knew I would be able to make a Broken Star.

Back in March I was hired to make a quilt for a really nice lady named Hope. She had the material, but not the time or ideas. She showed me the material, told me she wanted king or queen size and I spent a week looking at patterns and narrowed it down to 3. Two were applique and the third was a Broken Star. She decided on the Broken Star.

My Broken Star mach up to show her.

For the next 5 days I spent all my free time at the library, fabric store and online searching for a Broken Star pattern. I found pictures, but no pattern. A book at the library had a pattern for the Lone Star with measurements for all sizes crib-king. The crib size said the star was finished to 51". Perfect! A Broken Star (BS) is basicily a Lone Star surrounded by 3 more Lone Stars broken up (get it's broken). Looking at it I realized that the Broken Star is twice as big as a Lone Star so the finished size of the stars would 102" just about the size of a king quilt. Add a border and it's perfect!

So let's get started...

This BS is 32 pieced diamonds made of 7 pieced strips. Each strip is made up of 7-2" fabric strips sewn together and cut  at 45* angle.

Cut the following to make the 3 sets for the 32 diamonds:

The 13 fabrics I'm using lined up.

Fabric 1 - 3

Fabric 2 - 6

Fabric 3 - 9

Fabric 4 - 12

Fabric 5 - 15

Fabric 6 - 18

Fabric 7 - 21

Fabric 8 - 18

Fabric 9 - 15

Fabric 10 - 12

Fabric 11 - 9

Fabric 12 - 6

Fabric 13 - 3

Sew them into strip sets as fallows:

Fabrics: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7

Fabrics: 2-3-4-5-6-7-8

Fabrics: 3-4-5-6-7-8-9

Fabrics: 4-5-6-7-8-9-10

Fabrics: 5-6-7-8-9-10-11

Fabrics: 6-7-8-9-10-11-12

Fabrics: 7-8-9-10-11-12-13

***drop each of the fabrics down by 1 1/2" as you sew to get the least amount of waste***

Iron Iron Iron

When I learned to make the Lone Star it was suggested that ironing happen with some liquid starch mixed with water to help keep the biased edges from warping. 

Once the strip sets have been ironed you can begin to cut at the 45*... It's hard, but easier than expected. Lay the fabric on your cutting surface.

Line your ruler's 45* line up with one of the seams and make your first cut to even the top of the strips. The next cut will be made in the same manner but the 2" line will be at the top of the fabric. Cut as many of these types of strips as you can from each set.

Remember that the sets are cut at angles so the seams wont meet up at the edges they need to be a 1/4" off so that when sewn the seams lineup. Pin the sets together so that fabric 1 is to fabric 2 and so on.

I put my pin cup behind my machine to put the pins in quickly. Worked like a charm. 

After sewing all the sets together you will have 32 diamonds.

Measure the upper outside edge to figure the size of the background squares. (The book directions said 18", but mine were closer to 15 1/2") you will need 20 squares in that size and 2-25" squares. Cut the 25" squares from each corner to the opposite corner to make a total of 8 triangles.

The book I found at the library said to sew the upper right square to the diamond then sew each of the diamond square combos together. ***Do this for only 8 of the diamonds.***

After you have sewn the 8 diamonds and backgrounds together to make the center star sew the rest of the 24 diamonds together in groups of 3. I then sewed them to the background squares and the loose edges together. The middle two empty spaces on each side get one of the triangles the rest get the squares... To end up like this...

Broken Star quilt top un-quilted

Layer, baste, quilt...

Next up will be my quilting...

Goodbye bunk beds, hello loft beds!

When the girls were little we decided that they would have bunk beds instead of two twin beds. So we made them bunk beds and attached them to the floor, studs and ceiling. They were awesome! Years went by and my little girls turned into wonderful teenagers. A few months ago I decided that they needed separate beds, but with the 3 dressers in the room there wasn't enough room for regular beds. I measured everything and found that there was enough room in there for loft beds.

So one nice boring Friday we took the bunk beds apart. On that Saturday we cut everything and put them back as loft beds on Sunday. In all it only took about 8 hours...

The girls even helped.

 My wonderful husband didn't mark the wood as we took it apart like I wanted so they didn't all line up just right. I also had originally suggested that 4*4's get used on the corners, that was shot down at first then it became a wonderful idea...

Since we put the beds in Katie has actually slept in her bed every night!!!

Each girl decorated her side of the room how ever she wanted. Kris is the minamlist...

While Katie loves her 1 Direction...

my first moblie post...

ok so I down loaded the app for blogger tonight and it wont let me sign in or use anything. not that happy and uninstalled it. so im trying this on my phone (where most of my pictures are.) its interesting. it isnt doing any puncuation or spell check for me. On the pc i dont mind using the shift to capitalize or add puncutaion, but on my phone it sucks. i am wondering how the pictures work on here though so i will add some from a recent trip i made to Reno...ok it wont upload my picture...  so i think until i figure out why this will be my phone post. someday i will get on the pc and post about my girls room project and my broken star quilt. until then have a good day.

UUGGHH! The 'Hummer Storm' headache...

Well I did it! I made one of the quilts that I saw and really wanted to make!!! It is a paper pieced variation the Snails Trail. Of course I had to be difficult and decided to make it foundation pieced instead... After looking online for a day, I didn't find a real pattern for foundation piecing there so I printed out the original one that I saw and did all the measuring and math and figuring out each piece that needed to be cut...

I was WRONG!!! Apparently when you measure the triangles you don't measure the right angle side and add a 1/4" to each one for the size of the triangle. So I had to cut more... I trimmed all my 4-patch pieces to make the already cut triangles work. That brought the size down from 6 1/2 inches to 5 inches... Next was to figure what sizes the other 2 blocks needed to be.



All finished!!! With only 26 blocks left over... Wait how did I get 26 extra blocks? I of course again didn't pay attention to the math and since I needed 40 of the diamond block I figured I needed 40 of the snail block.

Well the top is pretty...

Now for the quilting! Well with this pattern there are lots of small seams over each other and they all thick so I did something I have done only 4 other times and machine quilt this quilt. I spray basted then pin basted then put the feed-dog downs and the darning foot on and started. Only one major mishap was the sewing needle breaking in a basting pin. OK my thread broke so many times it took me twice as long as it should have but the end result was wonderful!!!


As I was sewing this quilt all I could think about was how awful it was to sew. As I was putting all the blocks together for the top I was thinking about how I would do it different next time. As I was quilting I was thinking, "boy quilting is like childbirth. You soon forget the agony of it and want to do it all over again!" So it's off to the next quilt!

**** update on the hummer storm*** it received a 3rd place ribbon in the 2013 county fair. Not to shabby for a hand quilter quilting with a machine...

WooWhoo!!!

Guess who finally remembered their password?!? Yep this girl! 
Okay I didn't really remember it, but I did figure out the password to the email account this is linked to and recovered my password... 
Still I think it's kinda cool. This way I can remember all my quilts and how I made them (I loose my project book all the time). Maybe I will even add my fun recipes...
Going to start a snail trail quilt in a few hours. Next week I will begin a king or queen broken star... That will be interesting...