12 Pointed Mariner’s Compass Stars

A few weeks ago I posted about what I was stitching on during our time of isolation. One of the projects I shared was a twist on my Mariner’s Compass technique inspired by my friend Mary Ellen. I made three of these compass stars while on retreat in the beginning of March:

Then I made 3 more while I was “safer at home”:

The drafting is almost identical to the technique I use in my Compass Capers book (click here to purchase a copy).

I begin with a circle of paper, but this time I fold it into sixths instead of the traditional eighths. Then, as in the book, a few marks are made, and I connect the dots! Here’s an example:

By connecting the dots in different ways, many different stars can me made as is evidenced in the 6 compass stars above. I then cut them into wedges and paper piece them.

Once my compass stars were made I decided they would be beautiful in a tree skirt (our current skirt is 44 years old and has seen better days). To do this I taped together newsprint until it was a good size for a tree skirt. I folded this large piece into sixths, laid a compass star at the outer edge of the paper and drew an arc to fit. These 6 wedges were cut apart and I was ready to cut my background fabric, batting and backing.

I decided to use a “quilt-as-you-go” technique for putting the skirt together. This meant I could layer and quilt each wedge individually which made things much easier. And this is the finished tree skirt (I know it’s not a Christmas tree but, c’mon, it’s May 😄):

I used a number of different techniques while putting this project together and I’ve decided to do tutorials on them in the next few posts. Stay tuned 😊!