Carpenter's Star Christmas Quilt Part 1

If there's one thing I've learned from my overdue blogging, it's that I forget the details from my crafts and recipes.  Trying to avoid that, I'm going to start detailing some of the exciting specifics as I begin piecing together my newest quilt!  It's a gorgeous carpenter's star I first saw on this quilt on Pinterest.  I figured out my own pattern from that (sadly, the link only showed the final quilting- not the pattern), and I made a quilt for my mother-in-law last Christmas.  A couple more baby quilts later, I wanted to revive the carpenter's star pattern for a red and white Christmas quilt for my family.  I am well aware that it is still summer, but I like having plenty of time to poke around and work on a quilt.  I made the one for my mother-in-law in a breakneck 6 weeks last winter and I have no need to repeat that frenzy.

So, those details I mentioned:

Pattern:

Fabric (for twin size quilt)

[Note: will result in plenty of extra fabric (~1/3 yard per color), which I count as a good thing for inevitable bad cuts, poor calculation (cough cough), stains, loved ones running off with bits of fabric, or other quilting- or life-related issues.)

• 4 yards white fabric
• 4 yards red fabric
• 1/2 yard binding fabric
• 4 1/2 yards backing fabric
• Twin quilt batting- high loft
• Red thread
• White thread

For the quilt top, I ended up getting 4 different patterns of red fabric (1 yard each), 3 patterns of white fabric (1 yard each), and 1 pattern with holly leaves- a mix of red, white, and green, as an accent stand in for some white parts of the star (1 yard).  I got a different red for the binding, and am using one of my red quilt top patterns for the backing (so for that pattern, I got 5 1/2 yards of fabric total).  With a 20% off coupon, the supplies all cost ~$80 I think.

Squares and Half-Square Triangles (HSTs)

• For each color, cut 12 squares and 24 HSTs
• Squares measure 5 1/2" square
• HSTs cut from 5 7/8" squares; end triangle measurement is 5 7/8 x 5 7/8 x 8 1/4; HSTs sewn together will measure 5 1/2" square, the same as your regular squares

I definitely needed to capture these measurements because I did NOT remember my sizes from the last star quilt.  I tried looking up some handy dandy charts online, and unfortunately the one I followed was off, perhaps because I wasn't cutting my HSTs the same way they were.  There are a lot of great tricks to save you time, but they require you to have multiple triangle pairs of the same two fabrics, which is not the case in my quilt.  What I did was cut each larger square, and cut it in half to get 2 triangles.  That likely threw off my end measurements to be bigger than the blossom heart quilts table.  Live and learn, right?  I had a lot of excess fabric so I cut new squares (now 5 1/2" square) to match my larger assembled HST squares.

After hours of cutting and laying out the pieces in the pattern, here's where I wound up:

As you can see, my designated spot in the living room was too small, so I had to lay out portions on the couch.  That's ok.  :)  You can see the few spots where I swapped out an all-white portion for the holly pattern.  I originally had the holly scattered throughout the white parts and it was too distracting, so I consolidated into designated groups and was much happier.

I currently have 4 or 5 rows sewn together, so I'm about 1/4 of the way through the quilt top rows.  Onward and upward!