It was Saturday morning, before 8:00, and I was already in my studio with an entire day free.
As my mug says, “Life IS GOOD.”
I planned to spend the morning working on my Hunter’s Star quilt. I started by using Bonnie Hunter’s Essential Triangle Tool to cut strips into the triangles that would become half-square triangles (HSTs).
Once I started sewing, I realized I had to pay close attention. If I wasn’t careful, one corner wouldn’t match quite right…
For the few that needed help, I pulled out my Bloc-Loc ruler…
and trimmed off the necessary slivers…
After making several sets of four matching HSTs, I began sewing two from each set together to form diamonds. I started laying them out and realized I needed another look at the pattern…
I printed the design from EQ and colored in the diamonds so I could see how everything fit together…
That helped me spot something I had missed: the diamonds needed to be sewn in different orientations. I started making them in groups of ten so I could keep track of which was which…
I also remembered that I still needed larger squares for the corners.
Eventually, I could lay out the block, minus those corner squares..
And then came my biggest realization of the morning: I wasn’t piecing a whole star at once. The corner portions of the blocks were going to form the star…. DUH!! No wonder I couldn’t visualize how it was going to work.
When I stopped for lunch, I had about 40 diamond sets put together (out of 160), and HSTs from each color combination set aside for the filler portions of the blocks…
I think this quilt will be fun to piece, but I’ll definitely need to keep my wits about me.
It’s the kind of project that rewards slowing down, checking the layout, and enjoying the moment when the pattern finally makes sense.
Have you made patterns like this???
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