5 FRIENDS AND A FEATHERED STAR!!

UPDATE---TREE TIME BLOCK OF MONTH--BLOCK 5 IS NOW POSTED ON THE RIGHT SIDEBAR.

MY BLOCK

 About the last month has been stressful one for me.  You see, my Wacky friends ask me to "guide" them in the making of a Feathered Star Block.  "I am no guru of feathered star", I think to myself.  My only qualification is that I have made them before.  I took on the challenge, only because of their urging not assuring their success.  My so-called teacher is Marsha McCloskey's book of Quick Quilts.  Thru the learning process, I discovered that I needed more help than Marsha had given me so I made changes where I needed and added some "helps" that I needed along the Feathered Star Way.  As the time approached, I was confident in my expectations of success for this group of quilters.  They are vey capable of anything, just not very confident---at least not in this area.  The Feathered Star is very intimidating.  You look at the pictures and think--not no, but Hell no! I gave them words of encouragement.

You can do this!!  You could even do it without my help!  They didn't believe these words, but they are about to find out how truly capable they really are--

I printed a Radiant Star diagram from EQ6.  I lettered each piece and added a snippit of my fabric choice for each piece.  This is a wonderful thing.  You can quickly look at the pattern and then the diagram and see which piece you are cutting from which fabric.  I wondered if this would be as much help to them as it was for me.  It was.  They were quickly on their way to breaking this bugger down to a workable level.

Their homework was to make their 32 -1 1/2 inch half-squares with Marsha's Bias Strip Method.  They all had them ready.  With the diagram, they were able to quickly cut their other pieces, place them in baggies and we were ready to go!

OK--Did you test that 1/4 inch seam?  Are you equiped with a 8/60 needle and 50 to 60 weight thread? 

This is no more than a nine patch block.  If you break it down to that and focus on one section at a time, you will not be overwhelmed.  Remember:  Hard by the Yard, but a Cinch by the Inch.  Laying the feathers out in their appropriate placement using the Bears' Paw background shape as a visual clue that you have the feather tips aimed in the right direction is a tip that helps me.  The corner segments are the easiest so let's do them first!  I placed all my pieces on my table top flannel board that I had encouraged them to make and bring with them.  They opted to put their pieces up also.

The girls were a bit quiet (not like them ,AT ALL!).  I could HEAR their determination.  I am praying at this point, but actually am proud of their efforts.  I am thinking --CRAP!  I hope if they have a problem that I will be able to solve it for them.

Just as I thought, they ended up giving ME a tip or two.  We were all able to finish a Feathered Star in a 1/2 day.  They were then "on a roll" and began to add more as you can see in the pictures below.  All the blocks are so so different.  We spent lots of time discussing the differnces in them and why each was so beautiful.

KATHY'S BLOCK

ANNIE'S BLOCK

RHONDA'S BLOCK

KATHLEEN'S BLOCK

GREAT DAY, GREAT EXPERIENCE, GREAT GROUP!!!

I will be updating this post to announce Block #5 of my Free TREE TIME BLOCK OF THE MONTH~