Vintage Six Point Star (60 degree diamond) block/Help!
 

Alright, I've really done it this time. I'm in a pickle and I need some help to finish a quilt I've invested a lot of time and money into.

I saw this beautiful quilt on pinterest, and knew it was the perfect vintage look for my next project, and best yet, it looked pretty easy. http://countrycrossroadsquilters.com...um-287x383.jpg

From the research I've done online, this sort of quilt has several names, most commonly a six point star using 60 degree diamonds. Am I right or am I right? Ha. I immediately set to work cutting up my diamonds in teals and browns and whites. This weekend I wanted to start making my squares. I knew my quilt wasn't going to look exactly like the one in the picture, so I planned on a 12x12 block with my stars surrounded by white.

Frankly, the machine six point star tutorials I've found online (only two) have sucked major, and I spent 6 hours trying to make ONE block. I am not a patient person, so this was very, very frustrating for me. I started following one tutorial, which in my opinion had a lot of waste on it in regards to the white background against the stars, so after fiddling with it for awhile, I gave up on it and just started messing around with it on my own.


Big mistake. I decided to just sew the star first. And man was I excited when that was done. Everything lined up perfectly! This is a huge victory for me, because I suck at seams!

But then my new problem was/is, how do I connect my white space to my now completed star? Is there an easy way to do this without a huge amount of waste in fabric? I'm hoping this makes sense. Sorry for rambling. Let me know if I need to clarify anything, I need assistance!!

you'll see in the first picture how many white diamonds the tutorial I was using suggested I use. Thats a LOT for something that's just eventually going to be squared up, don't you think??

I can't help you, but I surely hope Jan from VA looks at this, I know she will have the answer for you! It is a pretty star, good luck!

There are 2 basic ways to do this block.

One is to do it like in your picture and do Y-seams.

The other is to divide the center of each star's top and bottom into 2 pieces and then strip sew. Therefore you would sew one lying on its side triangle to 1/2+ of an triangle on end to then another triangle on its side ... and continue. Will try to put a picture of it when I get my scanner up again.

I would do set-in seams. Vintage quilts were often pieced by hand, and it's easy to piece that kind of seam by hand. However, you can also do it by machine. The key is to stop sewing exactly at the seam line (and backtack) instead of going all the way to the edge of the fabric. (This is on that inner corner.)

Here are tutorials that might help:
http://www.freshlemonsquilts.com/?p=1373
http://www.quiltuniversity.com/y_seams.htm

It would seem to me that you don't square up the block, but turn one of the white blocks on the top section on its side and sew it in with Y seams. It then becomes an edge of the next block.

If you look again at the quilt you want to copy, you will see that there are no square blocks, so no waste by cutting down the diamonds. You have the diamonds in your example placed the wrong way and are using too many of them. Remove the ones at the 4 corners, take out one at top and bottom and place the remaining two the other way, and you will have a block. I would also do the set-in seams. They're not that hard when you practice a bit, and they do look nicer IMHO than having a seam running through the patch.

You need to assemble it like a Tumbling Blocks quilt with set in Y seams. You may have more luck viewing tutes for "traditional" tumbling blocks assembly. Irish rose is correct the white area around your star is "shared" background for the adjacent star. When you do the edges of your quilt you have to make partial diamonds or cut down.

Thlis quilt is next on my list, (after I finish the hexagon diamond quilt I'm working on now) but I plan to do EPP. I know I would not do well at all machine piecing those stars. Even hand piecing (not EPP) would be more accurate I would think. Others here have offered good advise. Good luck.

I agree with Dunster, I would leave them as hexagons and put them together that way. I am doing something similar but I am han piecing mine
http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...s-t180591.html

Yes! THANK YOU! The example picture I used with all the white diamonds (18 of them. FREAKING 18!) was from the tutorial I was following online that I ended up getting extremely mad at and abandoning. I KNEW there was a way to piece this quilt without wasting so many freaking white diamonds.

Frankly, if I can get the design to look exactly like the picture, that would be ideal. Am I going to be better off piecing these white diamonds into hexagons by hand? I know that they "tumble" into another block, so I guess I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around how this is supposed to come together, unless I do it literally one star at a time...?

I don't really want to sew a diamond into each nook of my star to complete the block, do I? That's going to change the overall look of the quilt and have more white space than I was hoping for. I realize that I'm going to have some waste at the bottom of the quilt by making half stars, which I'm fine with, but for someone who's never done a "tumbling" quilt or block before, I'm not sure how to piece this together. Should I just do all of my stars first, then lay them out how I want them, and start piecing them together with my white space and my Y seams?