I did a queen size quilt with this technique. 2" finished squares. The quilt (you can see it at
http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...s-t254668.html) also had a lot of HSTs and since you mentioned this--it did NOT work well with HSTs. I think HSTs are much less forgiving of slight variations from the 1/4". As a result I couched yarn around the stars to cover up the fact that the points didn't match well where HSTs were involved. I used the technique on another project with squares only, and it worked great. I also made my own grid on featherweight fusible interfacing, which worked fine--I didn't even mark the squares, I just laid out all of them in a uniform grid on the interfacing, and fused them.