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Mar 18, 2014

Hunter's Star blocking

I finished up piecing my Hunter's star using Moda Fabrics' Floral Gatherings line, and now it's time to block it out! I have 42 9-inch blocks, so I'm going with a 6x7 arrangement. At first, I thought to go all willy-nilly and pull blocks at random to place, but the more I looked at it, the more I thought some of the star points were lacking not being with similar colors. So I switched and swapped, and I think I'm finally happy with this arrangement:


This is more or less the final arrangement I settled upon. I moved around some of the green and orange blocks within their color groups. I almost wish I had six more blocks to make the grid 6x8, but I may just be overthinking it. 

I'm still considering what to do for borders. I would like to use this on our queen size bed, but as it stands now, these blocks will come out to only 54x63. That's quite a bit of area to make up to cover a mattress that's 60x80, not even counting overhang. I was thinking of a plain 2"-3" border, then another intricate pieced border, maybe just of the star points, followed by another plain border. And maybe the pieced border only has star pieces grouped intermittently throughout the border. I haven't decided. Let me know if you have any expanding ideas that would help me get the finished quilt to somewhere around 90x106, or whatever the recommended queen quilt size is.

5 comments:

  1. Love love love it. Thanks for sharing!

    -modalissa

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  2. It is gorgeous! I love your layout! May you tell me your easy/cheat way to do Hunter's Star?

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    1. Thank you! I'm looking for a link to the easy pattern. In the mean time, the basic idea is that you use three matching 5" charm packs. You match 3 dark squares of the same fabric/pattern with 3 light squares of another fabric/pattern (hence the reason why you need 3 charm packs). Set one dark and one light square aside. With the other two pairs of light/dark, put each pair RST and sew around the edges, then cut from corner to corner, twice. This yields 4 half square triangles (HST) from each pair of squares. Now with your 8 HST and your 3rd pair of blocks set aside, you assemble the block.

      Still looking for the pattern. I'll post the link when I find it!

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    2. Here it is! http://www.cascadequilts.com/2011/02/hunter-star-tutorial.html

      I forgot the part where you need to trim the HST down to 2 3/4". That's kind of important. :)

      I used 6 charm packs, which yields 42 9" blocks. 3 charm packs will yield 21 9" blocks, which will make for a nice block placement of 4x5, and a good size lap quilt. Enjoy!

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