My 2013 Lucky Stars Quilt

This was the big project I wanted to get finished these holidays! I was over it when the final block arrived at the start of December and then I wasn't super-enthused about the ideas for finishing it. However, I took inspiration from Amy Gibson and her Sugar Blocks and knew I wanted a large star in the centre of the smaller lucky star blocks.

Somehow I ended up at patternpile.com (probably via google images) where I found a picture of an 'inverted star' which is just a series of squares and half square triangles. Strangely, I couldn't find directions for a 26" version of the block so had to make up my own! (I will put the measurements I used down the bottom - I am no expert, but it all worked out for me!)

I am not sure I meant to have the chevrons make up the final star ... think I was planning for it to be a solid star ... oh well, it fills the gap!

I have no idea how to quilt it. There is not a lot of room for quilting around the 12" stars and I don't want to quilt over the stars. I might just quilt in the ditch around the stars and then fill the background with something geometric.

Anyway, read on if you want to make your own giant (26" ish) inverted star:

• Cut one centre square 9 1/4"
• Cut four 'outer corner' squares measuring 4 7/8" (chevrons) and four 'inner corner' squares (solid on my quilt)  also measuring 4 7/8"
• The half square triangles start out as 5 1/4 squares. You need 12 squares of both colours for a total of 24 HST blocks.

The putting together is just a matter of following along row by row with the picture ... occasionally I got my HST blocks upside down and had to unpick and re-sew. I made the top two and bottom two rows and added rows three and four onto each side of the big centre square before putting it all together.

I should also add that I sashed all four sides of my lucky star blocks with 2.5" sashing which is why I needed a 26" centre filler. I quite like how it turned out.

I chose a very hot and windy day to photograph it! Under-exposing wasn't working (as can be seen in the first photo below), so I put my trusty DSLR on auto.