Let's Make Baby Quilts 2/24/14

Welcome to anyone who has come here via Jennifer Fulwiler's "7 Posts, 7 Days" challenge. In case you're wondering, a bibliophagist is someone who devours books. And when I'm not reading, I quilt.

This past week both books and quilting took a back seat to Obsessive Research on the Internet (about which, more later). Nevertheless, a few things did get accomplished.

My Storytime Stars quilt is slowly growing, but I don't have a lot to show for it. Since each star features a different novelty print, each block requires a different color scheme. Selecting fabric is my very favorite part of quiltmaking, but having to do it 16 times for one small quilt is time consuming. I hope I can finish this quilt before my new grandson outgrows it. (Maybe I should make it larger so that he can use it longer. But then it would take even longer to make... )

I tried two more different ways to make my flying geese units. I tried the No Waste method demonstrated here in a video by McCall's. Lots of people swear by this method, but my units came out too small for my center square.

An eighth of an inch may be "close enough for government work," but it's not in quilting. So I switched to doing my geese with the Sew & Flip method.

I drew a diagonal line across a 2.5" square. Then I opted to draw a second line using a cardboard template that was a right triangle with 2" sides. (See Bonnie Hunter's Bonus Triangle tutorial. She goes into a whole lot more detail which includes some invaluable tips which will increase your accuracy.)

Stitching on both lines and then cutting between them allows you to end up with a perfect Flying Geese unit and two perfect 2" squares.

I end up with eight of these bonus Half Square Triangle units from each star. I'm not sure what I'll do with them, but it's fun to see them pile up.

I've cut out the parts for six more stars. The Banana Star is completely finished.

The Nursery Rhyme Star is almost finished.

Before I made the star points, I laid out the other components and realized that they made a pretty nice block all by themselves. I guess I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble if I'd just made all the blocks like this! Or maybe I'll make another quilt someday using this simpler version.

Today I'm linking up with "Let's Make Baby Quilts" at Michelle's Romantic Tangle.