Lone Star Quilt #1 - Choosing Your Design

[Music] hi I'm Nancy with on points tutorials tips and tours I'm excited to start a whole new series with you this quilt is a Lone Star you can see the one behind me is one of the many lone stars I've made Lone Star can also be called the Texas Stars sometimes you'll see it called a Bethlehem star it is a really traditional classic quilt and everybody that makes one it's the kind of idea that you know once you tell people that you're starting to make quilts oh will you make me one of those Texas stars that's what this is I want to show you a few samples a couple that I've made but the first one I want to show you is a historical quilts it's an antique quilt from my family this is a quilt that I am told my great aunt Rachel made and this is a Lone Star sort of a little bit considered a crazy quilt if you imagine the idea of making these small diamonds starting with a 1 inch square of fabric this quilt was hand pieced and hand quilted I think probably a hundred and ten years ago so this is one of my prized possessions this is aunt Rachel's Lone Star quilt that my mom let me have my next one is one of the first quilts I ever made and I decided I wanted to make a lone star don't know what crazy thing I was thinking when I did that my mom wanted a quilt to hang in a particular place in her house and she said what could you make me one of those lone stars and I was like sure I can so I pulled out some magazine somewhere and I found a pattern and I used solid fabrics which is something I rarely ever do anymore and I made this quilt so here's a couple of things I learned about this first I'm not a big fan of solids every mistake you make stands out like a sore thumb second it's never ever ever a good idea to hand quilt with invisible thread I was a beginner I didn't know anybody I did it I learned I don't do that anymore this one I took as a class with Jam krantz now jam Krantz is from I believe the San Diego area she had come to the local quilt guild here and I took the Lonestar class with her it was kind of funny at the time I had already probably made five or six lonestar's pretty much thought I knew what was always a what it was all about and Jamm taught me a thing or two and that's one reason you always want to be taking classes even if you think you know it all there is something to be learned in a class so this was a class from Jan Krantz she does have a book called Lone Star's and Beyond and this was the watercolor Lone Star this is quite different than the other quilts that I've showed you and the quilt that we're gonna make because the colors do not rotate around in that perfect circle like the other Lone Star's this quilt required a lot more fussy cutting to get the diamonds and to get that watercolor effect love this quilt just finished quilting it sir doesn't have a binding on it it'll have a binding on it soon this is an example of one of the Lone Star's that I've made in haven't finished yet someday I'm gonna have that the setting corner all done I want it to be hand appliquéd I want it to be fabulous but in the meantime it's my example of a larger Lone Star when we come back I'm going to show you the difference between planning and larger Lone Star and smaller Lone Star's just like every quilt you first got to start with your planning phase so I'm gonna take you through the steps that I do for planning the colors the size the pattern that I'm gonna use for a lone star quilt so in my electric quilt program which is a quilt designing program there is a Lone Star and this is the pattern that I drew out is a little drawing so I want to talk to you about repeat or no repeat traditional long stars oftentimes repeat the colors and what I mean by that is if you look at this little drawing it starts with the red blue purple yellow and then goes back to purple red and blue into the middle this would be the repeat it's a wonderful way to do a Lone Star nothing wrong with it whatsoever the only thing that I consider when I'm looking at one like this is I only get to use four fabrics and in my world if I can use more fabrics I'm happier I like using more fabrics doesn't mean it's always gonna happen that way but when I look at a repeating one it just makes me a little sad to think I'm only gonna use four fabrics so what I more often times will do is not to repeat so I colored this one in kind of a rainbow ish kind of a color so starting with a red going to yellow and all the way down to blue looks like a rainbow I love this you get to use seven different fabrics also what I like about this is when you get the diamond sections done you can choose to put the blue in the middle or the red in the middle it gives you more options when it comes to the settings squares and triangles now we'll talk about setting squares and triangles later but just know that when you do the no repeat method where you're taking one color and going to a totally other color you have more choices available to you in your settings squares and triangles so the idea is you want to get yourself a blank chart so this is a Lonestar printed out of the electric quilt program that's an idea there's other ones that can be found but with this you have a start for playing with your colors after you've started playing with your colors then you're gonna start looking at how you want to charge your colors so before I go into this little step I want to take you to a couple of little samples here with my diamonds with this diamond the purple diamond you see that I've used only for fabrics going across so this particular design this layout if you will would be called a four by four so the idea is you have one two three four going across and one two three four going down if given a choice if this is your first lone star this is the size you want to make making one that is just four by four is going to be easier the Loess seems and less fabric to choose now this would be a six by six two three four five six and then go to the other cut side one two three four five six now the cool thing about this is I got to use eleven fabrics I love it when I can use more fabrics but this is a harder quilt to make not only will I have additional seams but I had to pick eleven fabrics and for a lot of people in quilt world picking four fabrics is just going to make them uncomfortable so as you get more and more experience more comfortable with your colors that's when you want to branch out and do a larger Lonestar alright so you've kind of decided what colors how many colors that idea now we need to chart our lone star this chart is gonna do two things one it's gonna kind of give you a map while you're working on your Lone Star so you don't get lost and confused and two it's gonna help you decide how much or figure out how much fabric you need so we're gonna start with the piece paper and a ruler and a good pen start by drawing a simple line now we're going to draw a 45-degree angle because Lone Star's are done on a 45-degree angle so here's my 45-degree angle using my square ruler this Center diagonal is your 45-degree now because I'm only working on an eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet of paper I'm gonna draw my diamonds in one inch grid so one three four so this is my first set so I am designing what I would consider it beginner long starry 4x4 so that's gonna start with four lines then turn and do the same thing going up the other way and this time I'm gonna use that power cutting technique remember where I add the pieces together to cut I'm gonna do the same thing but just for drawing start at four three two one so even for drawing power cutting is gonna make it go faster so now I have a chart this is a four by four now it's mater deciding what fabrics I want to use so I went to my stash and I pulled out some fabrics so par for the course I picked one fabric that had a lot of really great colors in it and then I proceeded to go through my stash and find other fabrics that coordinated so here you see a nice selections of fabrics that all go with this same fabric always using that little palette to choose my colors don't have to use this fabric but I just might in this case I love this fabric I knew I was gonna use it the mat the question became how much of it was I gonna use so after I chose some fabrics to play with I cut them into small diamond sections so by cutting a one inch strip and then cutting those on the 45-degree angle to get these little one-inch diamonds now I take my chart and I can start playing so just start playing with your colors do I want it to be start with the yellow point go to the red go to the green so many different options so here are the couple that I came up with so on this first option I did the no repeat message method I started with that beautiful fabric with the multi colors and kind of graduated on down into a dark color like this thought it looked really cool pretty much thought I had set this is kind of a standard pattern I love the no-repeat lots of fabric I thought I was set but then I thought I probably should give you more options I should show you other ways to look for your fabrics so then I decided to play so I started putting some different colors in different combinations this one I really liked I liked that that fabric I loved so much was in the middle which meant I would have more and more and more of it and then I kind of bled it out I repeated but not all the time then my fourth one this was the one I chose with this I'm not repeating fabrics nobody was more surprised than I was by that I'm not gonna repeat no I am gonna repeat my fabrics I started it with the green yellow that beautiful multicolored print to a red and then I repeated the fabrics to the multicolor the yellow and the green that means I'm the only using for fabrics that's a choice I made the fabrics said this is what we want to do so after you've chosen your colors it starts to time to put down the placement so you've got your chart now I want you to take your chart and label these diamonds starting with an A this is the a diamond this is the first one the next row is B and both of these are B's next is C and there's going to be three C's and the center strip is D in the case of this quilt that I am making because I am repeating colors I'm repeating that C so I'm going to come back to C B and a now my design is done I know how many strips I need so for each one of these letters I need one a strip of fabric so for my a I've got one too ace so eh I need two strips for B one two three four so B is for C 1 2 3 4 5 6 and D is just for strips this is how I'm able to figure out how much fabric I need for my quilt now with this quilt I am planning on cutting the strips two and a half inches wide so I usually I'll cut draw that up here at the top so I don't forget two and a half inches wide so for the a fabric I need two strips two strips times two and a half inches is five inches of fabric so that would be I believe an eighth of a yard of fabric for the B I need four strips times two and a half so ten inches of fabric which that's a little bit more than a quarter of a yard so I'm gonna have to get 3/8 of a yard so you understand the idea six times two and a half would be 12 and 12 would be 1/3 of a yard of fabric so that's the idea going through using this charting system you know how many strips you need you multiply the number of strips you need by the size strip that you're gonna make so I've got some other examples here so on this I did the 3 by 3 so this would be a small Lone Star so one two three one two three and I used five different fabrics for a I need one strip B to C three D to e one here is a larger one this would be a five by five one two three four five and I didn't know repeats on this particular chart so you can just you can understand them how it is you determine how much fabric you need so this is an important thing to remember when you're deciding to make a Lone Star two and a half strip two and a half inch wide strips is really kind of standard it's easy it makes sense going smaller is fine but of course the piecing is going to be more difficult if you want to make a large Lone Star let's say you wanted to make one for a queen sized bed the largest size strip you want to cut is three inches if you decide that you want to cut a three and a half inch wide strip for your Lone Star you will have so much wasted fabric each strip can get eight three-inch diamonds out of it if you go to three and a half you're only gonna be able to get six strips six diamonds out of that strip so you're gonna need a whole other strip for those last two diamonds so it would be my recommendation that your strip size is never bigger than three inches and that for your first Lone Star make it a four by four I think you'll find that a doable quilt thanks for watching our video if you liked that one be sure you subscribe to our Channel we wouldn't want you to miss a single video and leave a comment we would really like to hear from you [Music]

Channel: OnPoint-TV and Quilting with Nancy

Views: 37,446

Rating: 4.9633026 out of 5

Keywords: Nancy Roelfsema, Quilting, OnPoint, Lone Star, all things creative, Quilting tutorials, tutorials, quilt making, OnPoint tutorials, free online quilting class

Id: -Sg4ku75H-s

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2018