A Fun Hunters Star Technique

A few months back I posted about the book I purchased from Carla Klop while at her shop in Florida (click here to read that post). I was intrigued by her techniques, especially the one for Hunters star. I’ve made quite a few Hunters Star quilts using Deb Tucker’s technique, and even taught classes on it.

But this method looked even easier. So, I tried Carla’s way and was pleased. While in Birmingham England last August, I purchased a piece of fabric with VW buses on it. Our daughter-in-law likes them, so when I saw this fabric I couldn’t resist buying it, and the dark turquoise pin-dot to go with it.

I grabbed the rest of the fabrics from my stash, and jumped in. Carla’s way is to make framed square blocks, and then cut them three times diagonally (this shows the first 2 cuts):

The narrow middle units then have a triangle of the central square fabric added to them to make a larger triangle. This is repeated in a different colorway, and one of each of the resulting larger triangles are sewn together to make the hunters star block.

The leftover pieces make a fun border. If you want to try Carla’s technique for yourself, I highly recommend her book! She includes all the measurements to make them in many, many different sizes (click here to link to her site).

I loved making the blocks, but there was a problem. I ran out of the yellow dot fabrics (ugh).

So ~ I had to go shopping. Once I had additional coordinating fabric I took it along to Paducah and made more blocks. While there I decided I wanted to do something “outside of the box” with my new collection of blocks and VW bus fabric, but what?!? I had the start of an idea and laid it out on the floor in our flat in Paducah.

As I was making these blocks I realized my rotary blade needed changing (why do we wait so long?!) When I opened the container I discovered that I was down to the last of the ten blade pack, and the oil that the blades come covered with had turned to goo! I’d brought my Magna-dots™, so I placed the blade on the table and rubbed off the old oil with some fresh sewing machine oil on a swab.

The “now clean” blade was put into the handle and it worked great! I hope you found this tip helpful.

I must admit I didn’t have much time for stitching while in Paducah this year, with all the excitement of the show ~ and teaching. I wish I’d taken more photos of my classes, but I’m grateful to have snapped this one. All the students were such a joy!

Along with that pic, I found a few additional photos from the show that might interest you. Here are some I took after we’d taken down the quilts, and helped to roll the art quilts for shipping. These are views most people don’t get to see 😊. The first photo is of the miniatures we had the privilege of pinning into the cases:

And this is how it looked after the show. The quilts are out of the cases and boxed to ship home:

And the curtains are empty.

The show certainly comes down a lot faster than it goes up! And now for two parting images. The first is of a quilter wearing a different version of patch pants from the ones I made for my granddaughter (click here for that post).

And a closing image of Etcetera bubble tea.

Can’t wait for next year!