Mini-Lonestar

While making Annie's graduation Lonestar quilt I made one lonestar and decided that it was too small for the quilt I wanted to make. So, I made a second, larger lonestar. Since I had already completed the smaller lonestar I decided to use it to make a baby quilt for a coworker who was having a baby.

She knew it would be a boy so the blue lonestar would work great. I had planned to have it complete before this past Wednesday because we were going to have a shower for her at work, but she had the baby early, so I had extra time. I finished the quilt tonight, so I think I'll try to visit her this weekend.



For the quilting I stitched-in-the-ditch for the lonestar and used some decorative designs from my Fons and Porter's Quilter's Complete Guide and increased the size to better suit my lonestar.

Lonestar Day 2

Working nights has given me lots of time to sew and I've made all kinds of progress on the star portion of this quilt. Here's what I've done since yesterday:

I sewed strips together to create 4 rows for each point of the 8 point star:


Each set of strips get's cut at 45 degrees to create the rows:


Here's how the four rows go together to create the points:


Sewing the rows together is a little tough because you can't line up the seams because the seams are diagonal. So the seams have to be pinned about 1/4" off so that they intersect where the seam will be to sew them together.

The eight points then become the star:


Now comes the tricky part - sewing the the squares to fill out the corners. This is tricky because the corner on the star is already sewn. More about that next time.

Lonestar

Annie will graduate from Pharmacy School in a little under 2 years (right around the time that Lexy will graduate from Nursing school and I'll turn 30). Since I made Lexy a quilt for her graduation from High School I am going to make Annie a quilt for her graduation (I guess that also means I have to take Lexy to Europe for hers - better start saving now). Since, most likely, Annie will never read this blog, I'll document the process of making Annie's quilt.

I'm going with the Lonestar Quilt design because Annie's always liked the name Lonestar - partly because of Space Balls, partly because the first four letters also start our last name. This is how I'd like the quilt to look when it's complete:


The outer stuff is all border, which is pretty easy, so most of the work is involved in the star part. I've bought the fabric, and I'm working now on piecing the star. To create the star you sew strips of different fabrics together and cut them at 45 degrees and sew those together to create the points of the star.

So far I've cut the strips and I'm sewing them together:


I managed to cut all the strips without cutting my fingers (yay!). I'll post some more pictures once I've done some more sewing.