LONE STAR BLOCKS WITH NO Y SEAMS

I like Star blocks like Lone Star and Lemoyne Star. Traditionally they are made with Y-Seams. While that is not particularly difficult, it is not fast, it takes time to stop at the right place, backstitch, double check it's all right, etc.

Here is a way to make the Lone Star block without Y-seams. It does require an extra seam in each of the background pieces. Essentially, it is made as a Four Patch:

I found a great video you will find helpful for this process. It is for a much larger star made from 2.5" strips but the process is pretty interesting. It does waste a bit of background fabric but it only requires one size of background squares. I used two different sizes to minimize waste. I just needed to keep the two sizes organized where they needed to go.  

LONE STAR QUILT BLOCK WITH AMANDA CASTOR

 I was very glad I found this great video--I am planning to make a Quilt of Valor from these blocks with the instructions in this video.

Back to our 10" LONE STAR BLOCK. I only used 3 fabrics for the star, the green outer tip, the yellow inside tip (center) and the blue middle round. 

The star fabrics are cut 1.5" wide. Green and yellow each require one half a full strip, about 21". Blue requires a full strip since it is used twice.

The background squares I cut 4.5". There are 8 of those needed.

Be sure to watch the video above. Here are photos of my process:

Press toward the green, and toward the yellow

Be sure to cut at a 45 degree angle, 1.5" segments

Pin and Peek--be sure the center is as good as you want it to be. It is helpful to machine baste the intersection if you have trouble getting it to align with just a pin, an inch of basting stitches is easy to remove and retry if necessary

Maintain the 45 degree angle and trim off the tails

I decided to sew the background triangles on two different ways--the way shown in the video, and the way I did it on my previous 4 blocks. 

The Video method

One half sewn together with the Video triangle method

My original method--I just changed it to use one size triangle

One half sewn together with my method

Two halves

Sewn together

Very carefully trim the complete block to 10.5". Using a large square ruler really helps. 

Here is my Laurel Ridge top. This shows where I used the four 10" star blocks to replace four 5" blocks in each section:

Let me know what you think of this block. It is the way I made the one star block for my small sample of Oh My Stars!:

All of the stars in this large quilt were made the traditional way, with Y-seams:

The "No Y-seams method" is so much easier to me. It's your quilt, you get to decide.

Let's quilt.

Barbara