Piecing a LeMoyne Star Block, Part 1

Thank you to everyone who left comments yesterday to help me with my concern about my glucose tolerance test. If you have time to think good thoughts at my pancreas tomorrow morning it will be much appreciated. And it will be the first time my pancreas has ever received so much attention in my life!

In the mean time, I've been documenting the process of putting one of the LeMoyne Star quilt blocks together. Let me state very clearly, a quilting expert I am not. What I am good at is listening to good instruction and taking advantage of what I have learned from other more experienced people. A lot of what I'm going to post today is based on the good advice I got from others. Also, rather than create one very picture heavy post, I'm going to divide the process up into some natural chunks.

Step 1: Lay Out the Block

The very first step is simply to lay out your block, getting the diamond shaped pieces in the orientation that you want them to be in, and selecting the background fabric that you want to surround the star. In this case, I chose the light aqua Kaffe Fassett print because I thought it was a nice background for the pink and blue elements in the start.

Step 2: Set Up the First Pieces to Sew Together

The order of sewing that I learned in my class makes a lot of sense when it comes to making sure that you piece the right things together. One thing that may not be apparent initially is that certain pairs of pieces have one orientation, while other pairs have the opposite. This is true of the diamond shapes and the small triangles, which ar ethe first pieces you want to put together. You can start with any diamond shape, and then flip the bordering small triangle onto it so that the right sides of the fabric are facing. You line up the long side and point of the triangle with the point and side of the diamond. And you do this for every diamond/triangle pair where the triangle has the same starting orientation -- in other words, you are going to do this with every other diamond/triangle pair.

Step 3: Pin The Triangle and Diamond Together

This picture should make it clearer which edges should align with which other edges. The important thing here: don't be afraid to use your pins! This will help you keep the points from squirming away from each other when they go through the machine. Really, if I learned anything from this quilting workshop, it was just that: pins are your friends. Pin early, pin often. Use as many pins as you need to to feel comfortable that your fabric is going to stay where you want it to.

Step 4: Start Your Sewing Machine

This isn't so much a step in the process as it is a handy tip that I learned from Carolyn. To avoid those nastly little thread globs that can show up at the beginning of a seam because the top or bottom thread gets caught where it shouldn't, use a scrap piece of fabric to start your chain piecing seam. This picture also shows another very helpful tool when it comes to making nice seams -- my Bernina #57 foot -- this foot has a 1/4" guide on the right edge that makes it very easy to keep track of where you need to be seaming. I love this foot!

Step 5: Press Seams Open

For the other two tops I have put together, you just press the seams to one side or the other. when you open up your pieces. For these blocks, you actually want to open up the seam and press it down. The why of this will become clearer later when the pieces start getting larger. For this process it is very handy to have a nice, heavy iron. And I think a dry iron works best because there's no way for the pieces to distort with the addition of water.

Step 6: Put the Pieces Back in the Layout

The last step of this part is easy: just put the pieces back into the layout where they go. This allows you to admire your work and do a visual check on whether things are lining up well. Word to the wise: don't be afraid to rip if you aren't happy with what you see. It's a lot easier to rip at this point than it is when you've built the blocks up a bit more. And it takes a lot less time to rip and re-sew a seam than it does to rip and re-sew knitted stuff, so don't be afraid of the process.