I've been making stars.

I started with these two. The measurements of each these unfinished blocks is 3.5".



Then I made more. They are for the Modern Christmas Tablerunner Swap 2011. You might want to pop over there, there is a lot of lovely work happening.



I put the little stars in bigger stars. The big and little stars are called the Ohio Star and I just adapted the tutorial that Sheila had given us for the Mystery QAL.



These Ohio Stars are made with Quarter Square Triangles - QSTs.  I guess you could use triangle templates but I like to avoid sewing on a bias triangle cut when I can.



I learned some quilter's math. If you want your final QST unit to finish at a particular size then you need to start the QSTs with squares that are 1.25" larger or better yet, use squares 1.5" larger so that they can be trimmed down.

So I added 1.5" to the finished measurement of the final QST unit, in this case 3", and started with 4.5" squares of fabric. The QST unit is the part of the nine patch in the star above with the two green points and one background, one lighter colour triangle. When the QST unit was done, I trimmed it down to 3.5".

By the way, I added a link to the source of this quilter's math on my page where I keep tutorial and other links here.



You could easily make these stars any size, as the final set up is just a nine patch with four QST units, one centre and four background units. My final big stars finish at 9" (are 9.5" unfinished in the pictures).



I am enchanted with these stars, making the QST units a tiny bit large and trimming leads to very nice points without paper piecing and with little ripping.

I think I will set them in a row, add a skinny border and binding. My secret partner does not want a wide table runner so there is little room for anything more than these.

It is hard to think of Christmas before Halloween but the beauty and math of this simple but wonderful star has helped.

Best,

Leanne