Stitching a Lone Star quilt is very different than sewing a simple quilt for charity. Cutting the strip sets on a 45 degree angle wasn't too bad. I think it took me about an hour or so. Now you can see what one point will look like.
Sewing the strips of diamonds together to make the points of the Lone Star is going really slow. I spent an hour and half sewing 6 strips of diamonds into a star point this morning. There are only 5 seams, but each of those 5 seams has 7 match points. There are 5 intersections plus the 2 ends to match.
Properly matching the strips of diamonds takes time. When 2 strips are right sides together, the seams between the diamonds cross at a 90 degree angle. Those seams have to cross ¼ inch from the edge. See the diagram at left.
I'm spending a lot of time measuring, poking pins through at each match point, measuring, checking the match, and pinning. Then I carefully stitch the seam, check all the match points, rip out half the seam, match intersections, pin and carefully stitch again. Usually, the second time all the intersections match within a couple of threads and I call it good enough.
Below, you can see the first 2 points pressed and displayed on my design wall. That's all I have done! There are six more points to stitch together. If I'm going to finish this quilt by October, I'm going to have to get a lot faster or spend a lot more time on it. I really like the way it looks, but dang it takes a lot of time.
Previous posts: Lone Star Quilt -Part 1, Support Your Local Quilt Shop.
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