Frustrated with quilt
 

I am new to the board and have dabbled in quilting for a few years, nothing major. For the past year or so I have been doing more.

The current quilt I am working on has left me total frustrated. The pattern is from Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting Sept/Oct 2012. The name of the quilt is called Links (page 16 if anyone has this magazine). It is made using the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star (I even bought the special acrylic tool it called for)

I followed the pattern instructions making the stars to a T, even double checking my work. The large stars came out at 11" square (suppose to be 9" finished) and the small star came out at 8" (suppose to be 6" finished). If I cut them down to the finished size then I will cut the tips of the stars off.

I precut all the fabric for this quilt. Now I have the star squares that are too big and all the fabric I cut that is too small. I feel like I have wasted time and money and not sure how to fix it.

HELP!

Isn't that just the pits? Several people have reported similar things happening to them lately. It's beginning to make a believer for me that I should always make a test block first just to verify that I know what I am doing and that the instructions are correct. I hope someone here can help you.

I've never made this quilt, but I checked out the pattern on Fon's and Porter pages, and teh instructions for using the rapid -fire tool. It is strange that your blocks came out 2" out of size. Can you figure out which step went wrong? It seems to me that you may have used the wrong lines on the tool when cutting your stars.
If you trim to 1/4" outside the star points, how big are your blocks?

Can you post a photo of your stars?

I see a couple of options, but both involve unstitching the stars at least to some degree. The fortunate thing is that your stars are too big, rather than too small, so recutting is possible.

I'm going to reference the steps on this page http://www.fonsandporter.com/content...oyne_Stars.pdf in the following suggestions.

1.
Less unsewing, but may result in stars that are a little differently shaped (long narrow diamond segments, rather than the true diamonds). If you want to try this, do it on only one star first, to make sure you are happy with the result.

- unsew the star into 4 quadrants (see picture J in the link above)
- Trim the *inside* corner off the square, to make each an even 5" square unfinished. Then, when you sew them back together with a 1/4" seam, you will have a 9 1/2" unfinished block, 9" finished.

For the smaller stars, trim the same way, but to a 3 1/2" square. That will give you 6 1/2" unfinished, 6" finished.

2.
I would say the "proper" way to fix it. Will give you exactly what you wanted, but requires more unsewing and you have to be sure you know exactly where you went wrong in the first place.

- unsew as above, but then unsew the diagonal seam on each quadrant, so that you have pieces as seen in picture I. Double/triple check which line on the ruler you are supposed to use, and very carefully align the right line with your coloured diamonds, as shown in the photo.

Trim the 2 outside edges along the sides of the rule. Re-sew with a careful 1/4" seam, double check the size of your new quadrants (should be as noted above - 5" and 3 1/2") and then resew the rest of the seams.

I know you are frustrated. Two suggestions Put it away for a while. in the mean time do something fun. As you progress in your quilting you will learn more and new techniques. Then it might go easier or make sense. Secondly, without seeing pics and not knowing the pattern i would suggest bordering the small blocks to bring them up to larger size(use background or similiar fabric.). I personally find F&P patterns from magizines to be a definite challenge.

There's a video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmvQOFxsnaQ and on the Fons and Porter website is this video: http://www.fonsandporter.com/article...ne_Quilt_Stars
Maybe you can redo the stars?

I watched the video on youtube, read and reread the instructions before I even started. I have gone over the steps several times and followed them exactly. I read and followed instructions before and during that came with the tool. And I am pretty sure I did them right as each square came our exactly 2" bigger then they were suppose to (actually 1 1/2" if you figure in the 1/4" seam allowance)

I'm thinking I am just going to have to buy more fabric a recut the fabric for the borders around each square

Oh dear! I just made a silly big mistake too. I made the blocks too big and didn't know until I spread it out on the bed and it was dragging waaay over the bed and on the floor everywhere. I've set it aside, but it's taken me a while to get over being so upset...like 6 months. But now that I've decided what to do, I'm ready to pick it up again. So, don't rush deciding what to do, but use your time looking around for ideas about what to do.

i like krista's suggestions. i would definitely unsew the blocks that are too large.

That's what I would do. The pieces that are too small are the beginnings of your next quilt.