It has been some years since I last made a Christmas-themed quilt. I have been collecting seasonal fat quarters for that long as well, and I felt it was time to actually do something with them. My family Christmas at the end of November provided the perfect inspiration in the form of a book ‘Quilts from Quarters’ and I chose to adapt the ‘Octagonal Stars’ pattern. Quick making notes and critique of the pattern follow, but here’s the finished article:
I’ve been using Pam & Nicky Lintott’s books for just about all my quilting career and was excited to find their new fat quarter ideas. This particular pattern is a bit troublesome at the beginning, and the instructions were sparse with regard to actually piecing the stars together. Should you wish to do the same pattern, I have some tips:
- When sewing the blocks to the centre octagon, lay the block with a quarter inch triangle overhang on both ends, pin into place. Then stretch the two pieces together to flatten the long edge before pinning together in the middle and once either side. It will all stay in place and you should achieve a square block with the points of the star being within the 1/4″ seam allowance.
- Audition the fabric pairings – I was one fat quarter short and Margaret came to the rescue with three potential FQs she found in her stash. My least favourite of the three worked perfectly with one of the red designs and thus appears in the final quilt.
- I decided to use quilt-as-you-go so that I could sew a snowflake design in each of the motifs. This then means I did the same for the sashing and borders before backing the quilt and running straight stitching up the ditches and across the centres of the motifs.
- Plan your cuts and don’t be afraid to cut the FQs differently to the pattern to use the fabric more economically.
- Not everyone will have a handy laser, but I am lucky enough to. This meant I was able to set it to cut the octagons from the fabric – quicker and more accurately than I would have managed a template.
I daisy chain the pieces together for speed. This pic shows the quarter inch triangle overhang for reference.
A constructed motif. This was one of the first I did, before I discerned the best way of sewing together the elements. Trimming the piece to a square did mean a close shave for the points of the star…
One issue when working with both light and dark fabrics is getting a decent contrast when marking quilting patterns. I settled on the ‘magic’ air-reactive ink pen for the light bits and a water-soluble white pencil for the dark. You can just see the acrylic template I created on the laser – it is one-eighth of a snowflake-like design and I have marked a centreline for placement between the star triangles.
To create the template, I took a photo of the completed block and transferred it into Adobe Illustrator. Once I had settled on the design, I split it into eighths and sent it to the laser cutter at the correct scale to cut from clear acrylic (old COVID screens).
I meant to use a contrasting/ variegated thread for the quilting, but got carried away and forgot. Consequently, the quilting is effective for the construction but not so helpful as a design feature.
Take care not to iron the markings before washing as the heat can set both pen and pencil into the fabric. I tried wiping the pencil away with a damp cloth, but it wasn’t terribly successful. Hence the washed and tumbled look to the completed piece below.
