Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Fairy Star quilt block

Fairy Star
November 16, 1933-Nancy Cabot published her quilt pattern using the Fairy Star quilt block today.

Nancy felt "the delicacy of its lines makes the title quite fitting" and "only the daintiest of prints and colors should be used for it. Clever combinations of pastels are the most effective."

To make my block, I used the colors from Nancy's pattern which suggested light and dark plain fabrics which is different from what Nancy was suggesting in her newspaper column.

As can be seen on Nancy's pattern here, this is a pieced block that also has some applique on it.The small quarter circle shapes are appliqued to a large triangle.


I decided to piece the quarter circle shape instead and that's actually the easiest seam in the whole block! This is not a block for a beginning quilter. Every seam needed to put the block together is a "y" seam. This is one of those blocks that I think might be easier to stitch by hand than machine but I used my machine anyway. It's not my best work but it's done and mixed in with all the other 6" blocks in the sampler it will be fine, I hope.

I used templates to cut all of the pieces for this block. You can download my templates here. These are the pieces that make up the Fairy Star quilt block-



I started by sewing the pieces together into the units shown below-


I sewed those pieces together by first sewing the two little squares together leaving the quarter inch seam allowance loose where the point of the triangle needs to be attached-



The triangle is then sewn in-


I finished sewing the pieces together as shown below-


Note- I started by sewing the four patch together before sewing the long diagonal seam.



The Fairy Star block pattern can be found in Electric Quilt's Blockbase program as #3057.

Tomorrow-Canada Lily 

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