dots and low volume: stars for a block lottery

The Crystal Lake Modern Quilt Guild is introducing a new program at our April meeting - a block lottery! Any member that would like to participate makes a block (or two or three) following the rules for that lottery and each block earns that member one chance to win.  The winner of the drawing takes home all the blocks brought in for that lottery!

For our first lottery we chose a theme of star blocks made from dot fabrics on backgrounds of low volume fabrics. Any star block is fair game as long as the fabric requirement and size rules are followed.  The other board members and I each made a couple of blocks as examples to show the guild at our March meeting. For my first sample block I modified a pattern in the book Modern Bee - the Triple Star. My 12.5" unfinished version is a Double Star...

The center square finishes at 3" surrounded by half-square triangle (HST) and square units that finish at 1.5". The outer star HST and square sections all finish at 3". I chose to use a variety of blue dot fabrics as well as a wide variety of low volume background fabrics.

My second block was cut using the Easy Dresden ruler (you can watch a Missouri Star Quilt Company video tutorial explaining how to use the ruler here). The orange blades were cut from a 3.5" x 22" fabric strip, and the pink blades were cut from a 4.5" x 22" strip. One strip of each color is plenty for the entire block. After sewing each blade point and then sewing the blades together, I machine appliqued the entire unit to the 13" square background fabric. The background fabric was cut slightly larger because when appliqueing a block like this the background fabric tends to shrink up a bit.

The center circle of the dresden star was backed with Heat and Bond Lite so it could be fused to the dresden and background. I used a machine blanket stitch to permanently secure the circle to the center and then trimmed the block to the required 12.5".

This post contains photos of the other samples made as well as more details of the block lottery program.  I'm very excited to see the blocks that other members bring in April - maybe I'll be the lucky winner!  I sure wouldn't mind winning mine and the other sample blocks for myself :)