Thread: Brand new to quilting- working on a starflower

I posted a few weeks ago about a quilt top I inherited from my SILs late grandmother that I wanted to finish for her and I am so grateful for all the friendly replies! I decided that it would be ill advised to attempt to finish that very precious item without first doing some quilting on something a little less...well important I guess. So what better way than to start from scratch and make myself a small quilt?! I searched all over the internet for something that appealed to me and found a quilt I liked online. I didn't actually use a pattern I just recreated it. I believe it is called a starflower. Anyway- not using a pattern may have been my first mistake. Choosing a design with HSTs without really knowing the nuances of working with them was probably the second. Another mistake- and geometrical falsity- was to assume that I could use 4.5 inch squares to make HSTs and also use 4.5 in squares for the pieces that remain squares. Nope. Obviously you lose some size in the process of making a triangle. I also did not read enough about keeping your points where they belong. I ALSO made HSTs the hard way...one at a time. Slicing a square in half and then stitching the triangles together one by one. My solid color fabric is quite cheap and the bias stretches like mad...so this has been really interesting. I know it would have made more sense to take a class at my LQS, but we are moving soon and I want to establish with new folks there instead. So I went it alone on this one. I'm posting a pic of my first block and then of my second after I corrected some of my mistakes.
This was the first block I pieced. As you can see- another mistake was piecing the pinwheel first and then trying to add the edges. This was a pain. I read a tutorial on piecing this design in order to do it more correctly next time. You can also probably see that my corner squares are larger than the HST squares and the points doing match- some are buried in the seams and others are floating away from them. *sigh* I am a perfectionist and my husband says I must learn to accept the imperfections.
This is the second one. As you can see it is a bit tidier. The points *almost* line up in the middle. You can see I made a pretty big booboo piecing my HSTs. The photo on the right shows that. This is a result of 2 things. I discovered that you are supposed to trim your HSTs to size- that's a good thing. I didnt realize that if you did it wrong you'd throw the points off- that's the bad part. It cost me 2 squares of fabric and a couple trips with the seam ripper...but I figured it out. I am still using the one at a time method to piece my HSTs..mostly because I had a bunch of triangles in the my solid color and also out of fear...

Now I just have to figure out how to get these two blocks into the same quilt. The first is a tad larger because of my failure to trim the HSTs. Its probably about 1/4 inch larger on each side than my 2nd one. Maybe I can hid it in a border or something...
Hopefully by the time I finish all the blocks I'm doing for this one and get it sandwiched and quilted I will feel comfortable enough to tackle the heirloom one for my SIL.

Seems like you have learned a lot.

I did indeed learn a lot so far! I have a feeling I've got a lot of learning left to do! It was helpful for me to type this up and organize my thoughts about what went wrong and what went right, so I appreciate your kind patience in reading through my mumbles!

I think you made tremendous progress between blocks 1 and 2. I don't see anything wrong with your second block. I would probably sacrifice the first block or keep it posted near my machine as a reminder. I would certainly use #2 in a quilt with no problem. Keep up the good work.

I remember very well my first quilt with pinwheels....it makes yours look very good! Honestly, you have done a great job on your first attempts and I wouldn't be afraid to use them at all. There are many great videos out there that can help you in making HST, but I think the biggest tip I can give is to starch your fabrics very well before sewing. It will help to keep the bias edges from stretching so badly.

Thanks all for the kind words of encouragement! I do think I will go ahead and work both blocks into the quilt. It's a good exercise in accepting my imperfections! I was very "type A" in college- in fact I had a professor threaten to give me a B so that I could start accepting that I am not perfect! DH tells me it's good for me I definitely will cruise the tutorials on this site and around the web to try to head off some of those first timer blunders- I am sure they will still happen though! And I will go get some starch! Thanks for the tips!