Make a Lone Star quilt with Courtenay of Missouri Star! (Tutorial Video)

[Music] i'm courtney with missouri star quilt company and we're going to make a lone star quilt yes you in this class we're going to talk about selecting fabrics how to go about picking these fabrics for your quilt we're going to make strip sets then we'll cut those up we're going to talk about how to cut and stitch your diamonds then we're going to add your background fabric and guess what there are no y seams i know people are afraid of those y seams we don't have any in this quilt so we'll take the fear out of that i love love lone stars i've made more than a dozen and i just keep having fun with them every day i have learned so much and so many little tips and tricks that have made my lone stars even more successful the more i sew and i'm going to share them with you so let's get sewing let's talk about the supplies you're going to need for class you are going to need four one-half yard cuts of fabric for your lone star the actual diamond pieces we'll go over in a little bit how i chose my fabric so i can help you choose yours if needed then you are going to need a yard of fabric for your border and also a three-quarter yard cut for your binding i use the same fabric then you're going to need some spray starch i like to use this quilting and crafting spray by faultless you're going to need a small ruler to mark your quarter of an inch seam allowance i like using the two and a half inch by eight inch you're also going to need a six and a half by 24 inch ruler i like to use a creative grid i also like these magic pins you're going to need to pin we're going to pin a lot so i like these magic pins they're nice and small and very sharp you need something to mark your fabric with when we mark our seam allowances i like the sewline pencil for that it needs to be a product that's going to not show up on your top when we're finished you also need some thread i like a 50 weight thread i like to have a little pair of snips on hand and of course you're going to need a rotary cutter and a good pair of scissors is always great to have let's talk about fabric selection i chose this line called cottage blue by robin pickens for moda i find that it's easiest if you start with your border this is what i chose for my border this nice pretty blueprint then you can go you can stay in the line like i did i chose a variety of scales in my fabrics you don't have to stay in the line if you don't want to you can find with our background fabric we'll talk about more how i chose that background fabric later this is not part of the line it was a great choice but it wasn't part of the line kind of keep your eye for when you're choosing your fabric is your burst now i'm going to show you what the burst is this fabric stays in the same position through the whole quilt so i like to put as what i call a zinger or something that's really going to stand out in that burst so that's why i chose that yellow the other fabrics you can think about when we're getting ready to cut is what you want to be at your point and i chose this blue to be at my point so let's get ready to cut before you cut a thing i want you to starch i want you to starch like you've never starched before use a heavy starch make sure you iron it dry a lot of classes that i have they're spraying the starch nice and heavy they're giving it a quick press and they keep going well then they're fabric stretchy again you need to press it dry do not use steam ever in the class you're using the starch at this point and you will not need steam trust me but please start you will have a lot more success with this quilt if you start we're going to be cutting fabric on the bias in a little bit the bias is stretchy the starch is preventing it from stretching so much okay so once your fabric is nice and starched you're going to cut four two and a half inch strips by with the fabric from each of your star fabrics it doesn't matter what position they're in every fabric gets cut the same for the star points so we're going to cut four two and a half inch strips i'm going to even up my edge here and we're just going to cut two and a half inch strip here and you'll cut three more strips so we're going to cut off this edge cut it into a 20 inch strip because your strips are prettier when we sew in 20 inch strips you don't get as distracted they stay my seams say i'll stay a lot straighter when i'm using a 20 inch strip as opposed to the 40. i'm going to show you how i starch which i know will be fun so i really love this magic quilting and crafting spray it's a fairly new product on the market from faultless i have found that i don't use as much and this aerosol can really has a lovely spray that you'll see in a moment and you really don't have to on this starch i really don't have to get too heavy and you're going to press this dry dry dry dry all right so we're going to pick this up and this and you may not be able to tell by its drape but this is a lot stiffer than it was prior it lays nice and flat you won't have any any trouble okay so get all of your strips cut get them cut in half and we'll get ready to sell all right so now that we've cut our fabrics you should have eight of each strip that is a product that is two and a half inches by approximately 20 inches because we cut four strips of each times with the fabric and cut them in half so you should have eight of each of these of four different fabrics i have these laying here now is the time to choose your a b c or d at a b c and d if you haven't already we have provided you with a graphic i want you at this point to sliver trim off the end enough so you can see your fabric and i want you to label each one a b c or d you're only working with four fabrics and you think i'm going to keep those straight well i can tell you from a dozen and a half lone stars that once you start cutting these up and things get moved around it gets confusing and i have many times forgotten which one was my a and which one was my d so please have a little graph next to you have your reference sheet so you know what to refer to okay so once you have that done now we're ready to make our strip sets we are going to make four different strip sets and you are going to make two of each and i always always lay them out just like this some people lay them vertical i just like to lay mine horizontal but i'm lucky enough where i have the space next to my sewing machine to do that so this is my again this is my a fabric my b fabric i'm going to move over two and a half inches this is another reason why i love my little two and a half inch ruler i'm going to move that ruler over two and a half inches and line it up with the end of this top piece okay then i'm going to flip my b fabric up on my a okay nice and flat then i'm going to grab this end the far end now if you'll notice my selvedge is there i almost put my selvedges to the right that'll eventually get cut off and that way everything is to me it's cleaner so i usually keep my salvages to the right so i'm grabbing this fabric i'm grabbing it by this because when i get to the machine i'll remember where my thumb is that's where i'm going to sew because it's very easy to pick this up and start sewing at the other end okay so i'm trying to trying to help you because i've turned them too so if you grab that you'll know okay that needs to go in the machine okay so let's get this sewn i have my machine set at a 2-0 so a little bit smaller because since we're doing sub cutting i'd like to make my stitch length a little bit shorter okay i don't find a need to pin my strips we've got these starched they're not moving [Music] do [Music] you'll also might notice the speed of my sewing machine i'm usually a pedal to the metal girl but i'm looking for accuracy here so i slowed my machine down or don't press it as hard however you need to do that but you don't want to go as fast as you normally do if you're a fast seller so now i'm ready to add my c strip to this set so again i will lay my two and a half inch ruler there to see because we're offsetting by two and a half inches and you'll see why when we go to cut i'm going to put this strip on top of this one again go to the end that salvage end is there i'm going to grab it by that corner and take it to the machine [Music] i'm also here using an accurate quarter inch seam you want to have either if you're going to use a quarter inch foot if you have a mark on your machine a quarter inch seam allowance is very important to this quilt as well so again laying my two and a half inch ruler on there flipping up grabbing from this end again my selvedge is there and off to the machine [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so there's my first strip set all nice and pretty all nice and sewn now we need to press this when you press it i like to press normally away from my top fabric so whatever your first fabric was i press all my seams down if you decide you want to press them up that is just great just make sure you press them all all of your strip sets the same way either all up or all down again no steam we've already starched so these seams are going to lay nice and flat go back and hit this one again okay there's our nice flat strip set so when you lay it on your mat that top piece should be nice and even with a with your line on your mat and this should be nice and straight across the bottom there so you're going to have two that look like this okay then you are going to do a strip set that looks like this you're going to start with b at the top then add your c then your d then your a okay and again you're going to make two strip sets that look like that then you are going to make two strip sets that look like this you're going to start with your c at the top then you add your d your a and your b and last but not least you're going to start with your d at the top and you're going to add a b and c so all in all you should have two of each strip set so a total of eight strip sets and now we are ready to cut our diamond shapes you'll see that my top strip's nice and straight across that top line here on my mat which is great i use this any ruler that's long enough with a 45 degree mark on it is great but i like this creative grid right here you can see the 45 degree angle on our ruler that's going to be very important so you want to make sure that whatever ruler you're using has that 45 degree mark okay so we're going to go ahead and i'm going to line up that 45 degree mark right on one of the lines on my sewing mat so i know it's nice and straight then i'm going to move my ruler over to make sure that i'm not i want to make sure that i'm on just on the inside of all of my ends of my fabric and i am so i'm going to make my first cut don't be scared you guys can do it okay ready okay you are not going to need this now you're going to line up again your 45 degree mark on your ruler on this line on the mat now we're going to go over two and a half inches so if you can see this on the mat here there's one and on the ruler there's one inch two inch and then i've got this little half inch here so that's two and a half now in a in a perfect world and this looks actually pretty good your line should be on your line your 45 degree line should be there on that line on the mat this should line up perfectly with the edge of your fabric and it does so now you're ready to cut your first diamond shape okay now we're ready to cut our second diamond shape you're doing the same thing you're going to move over two and a half inches line up that mat line up those lines here and on the edge look at that so this means that with the with this line working out perfectly with the edge of my fabric my two and a half inch line that means that i pressed well and it means that my sewing my seam allowance was accurate if this is getting off at all that is why and the more accurate we are at this point the more the more success you're going to have with your lone star okay and there are times and you'll see when we get to the end of our seam here you have a little bit of wiggle room so if you need to re-straighten up the edge of your diamond shapes do it you will be happier in the end oh look at that that lines up exactly okay okay you need one more line it up there oh my goodness all four of these look good okay and see you've got a little bit of wiggle room here so if you need to straighten up and even up an end you're good okay all right there's your four diamond shapes okay you are almost there so go ahead and cut up all of your strip sets into diamond shapes keep them all in a nice stack of your a strip set your b strip set your c and your d i usually pin them and now we're ready to go to the sewing machine and sew them into our diamonds all right we're ready to sew our large points together so what you're going to need you're going to need one of your diamonds out of your a b c and d strip you're going to need one strip that starts with your b fabric one that starts with your c and one that starts with your d okay when you lay these out like that there's our pretty diamond okay so now we're ready to sew our first two sets together if you were not a pinner before you need to be a pinner now even non-pinners need to be a pinner here you cannot eyeball this trust me i've been sewing for 30 years i still can't eyeball it so please use the pen and use the marking method you will be much more successful okay so this this is the first piece we're going to sew on the right side i am going to mark my quarter of an inch seam right where these two fabrics meet okay so there's my mark then i'm going to come down here mark it again then i'm going to come down here mark it again okay we are going to flip this over onto that that's we're going to sew so i'm going to mark my seam allowance on this side again a quarter of an inch and it's hard to see my my thread because i used gray here but i am marking my pencil right over that seam there this is why i like this little ruler again because it doesn't get in the way if i was trying to manipulate that 24 inch ruler it'd be everywhere so that's why i like a smaller ruler for this okay so we're marked now we're ready to pin everybody okay so what we're going to do we are going to pin from the back on this top one right at that seam right where my pink mark is we're coming through the front there we're making sure that i'm not in my second fabric and then i'm going to go in right on that seam allowance there and go to the back it's a little off there okay then i want you to hold that pin straight up and down between your between your first two fingers there you're gonna hold that straight up and down real nice keep that pin vertical then you're gonna come in and this is why i like tiny pins i want you to come in and take the smallest bite you possibly can right next to that right in front of that pin you don't want to come in and do this because what are you pinning we need to pin right where that pin is so that's why i want you to get a real tight tight pin in there okay once that pin is there you can take that pin out and we're going to pin our next seat okay again we're going to go in right at that seam there i'm gonna check it on this side yep looks good there's the mark on that side again hold it straight up and down and we're gonna go right in front of that pin smallest bite i can it's being stubborn there there we go take that pin out and do the next one no pinning sometimes isn't your favorite chore but it'll be worth it trust me trust me all righty so we've got all three seams pinned we are going to the sewing machine quarter inch seam allowance all the way down you should have this little tail at the top and a tail at the bottom looks good let's get that sewn i know it's not part of the class please do not sew over your pins no matter how skinny they are all righty all right our first section is sewn let's open that up see how we did oh yeah looks pretty good all right now we're ready to mark and pin our next strip set okay we're marking our quarter inch here okay then this will go over here so i'm going to mark this side and i keep them laid out like you see them here when i'm sewing at home because again you can flip them and i've had people in class that just had them stacked up and just pulled off the pile and invariably they'll have one that's backwards so it's very easy to get turned around with this little project so all right we're back to our pinning again [Music] [Music] [Music] also if you have a needle down position on your sewing machine that's able to have the needle stop in the fabric i would recommend you use it just kind of makes that stay in place when you're pulling the pin out okay all right we're looking good there i always test and hold it open just to make sure everything looks good let's mark our last one we almost have a diamond you guys now if you invariably did this which i've done trust me just be very careful and using a seam ripper take out a stitch at a time don't try to normally when i use a seam ripper i get under here and i'll just push that seam ripper up you don't want to do this here you've got a lot of bias you're going to stretch it so just go through with your seam ripper very gently and take those out flip it back up the way it should be and then place it back on your fabric okay so we are marked are we marked here let's mark this last side ready [Music] [Music] alrighty you guys you have a diamond we're going to press all the seams in one direction again we're going to press we're not going to iron be very gentle [Music] right voila there's your diamond okay let me turn it around so our a is at the top you are going to go ahead and make eight diamonds they are all going to look the same once you make your eight diamonds get them all pressed then we're ready to add our background fabric alrighty so let's talk about your background fabric the background can be the trickiest part when you're choosing what you like and what will look good with your points now you probably already have chosen background fabric for your lone star that you're making today and that's just great i in my travels with my lone star have found that i normally don't pick out my background fabric until all of my points are done or at least half of my points are done then i take it to the fabric store i'm lucky enough i have 11 at my disposal here in town 11 12. and i lay them on the bolts of fabric see what makes that star pop this one was tricky we i had probably there was i think there was five of us and i kept calling in reinforcements in the one shop i just could not find a fabric that i liked i tried we tried a light yellow i tried a lighter blue we went with green nothing nothing was jumping out and then the suggestion was made let's try purple so then we started with the purple we must have had 30 bolts of purple 20 stacked up on laying these out it's a lot of fun and it's great to have other opinions on this because i would not have chosen purple so and i think it looks fun so don't be committed to your fabric ever and sometimes i've already cut my background and then went i don't really like then i'm gonna change it so just have fun with it and use what you have right now but keep in mind in the future maybe you want to take your points to the store and play with some colors okay so you are going to get your background fabric you're going to cut it into two 14 inch strips and one 10 inch strip you're going to cut four 14 inch squares and four ten inch squares and this is what you're going to get and then once you cut your squares i want you to cut them in half on the diagonal okay so there we have our half square triangles then we're going to add these to our diamond points so i kind of lay them here we are going to make one quarter of the quilt at a time and then you're going to make four quarters and put them together so i lay this out we're going to do this one quadrant here okay lay that there so your bigger squares are going to be in the corner and your smaller ones are going to be meeting here now i have i had you cut these larger than what you need because if i had you cut these exact and your lone star points weren't weren't quite the same size you might end up cutting off these points when you put your border on you went to all this work you do not want to cut your points off at this point so i gave you room a little bit of wiggle room so we can go back we'll go ahead and trim those off these outside corners off when your top is together so don't worry that this isn't gonna light up it's not so you don't worry about that so let's take our first diamond and i'm going to turn this over onto itself i'm going to bring this triangle up so that there's about a quarter of an inch of background fabric showing out of the bottom okay that will give me all of the extra at the top which is where i want it i am not going to pin yay aren't you excited you don't have to pin i'm going to take it to the machine and we're going to sew that first seam so okay let's let's go ahead we're going to press that and i'm going to press it away from the diamond and when you are done sewing this this should line up perfectly with the edge of your lone star point okay and it does now we're going to flip this over onto this one and i'm going to bring that point up again i'll show you on the back side so you've got about that much point hanging off at the bottom okay okay so okay that looks good yes that's off that's perfect we're going to press this again away from the diamond i and i'm pressing away from the diamond because there are less seams out here and that's the natural way to me that this background wants to go you've got one fabric here so pressing just makes it nice and flat if we were to press it in we'd be dealing with all these seams and it wouldn't lay as flat so that's why i like pressing away from the diamond okay so we have 1 8 of your quilt done let's do the next part and it doesn't matter if you add this one first or the small one first the big one or the one makes no difference you can be consistent but again doesn't so i'll just go ahead and do the small one first since that's what we did before again i have the little piece hanging out of the top there take that to the machine so okay so we're ready to add our last our last piece of this set i'm going to flip this over onto this side make sure that's nice and straight it is i'm going to move this up so i've got that little piece hanging off the bottom go and show you that on the back i have that little triangle hanging off and that's right okay then let's get ready let's sew it oh [Music] let's get this last one ironed we've got these big pieces there you can just go ahead and cut those off now we're ready to put our two halves or our two eights together to make a quarter okay so let's get those we're gonna we're going to mark just like we did before okay this time we have an extra seam to mark because we have to mark up in here now so we're going to this will be flipped over on there like that so i'm going to mark this side of my quarter inch okay guess what we're gonna do now we're gonna pin i bet you didn't see that coming did you okay so we're gonna do the same thing we did before you should be good at this [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] and then here i will go ahead and pin that point okay right and then here i just pin every a little bit it's not a there's no seams to match out here all right there we're all pinned let's go to the sewing machine and we're going to sew that [Music] do [Music] do [Music] now we're ready to press this but let me show you something if these little dog ears are bothering you that are on here on your points of your lunch just go ahead and cut them off they can stay they can leave but if if they're if you want them out of there you can go ahead and get those out of there just cut them off all right now we're ready looky we got a quarter let's get that pressed now at this point i'm going to suggest pressing the seam open okay eventually when we get our star together we're going to have a lot of intersections there a lot of fabric so i recommend that you press this open okay [Music] [Music] do [Music] all right you guys there's a one quarter of your lone star all right looks good i want you to make four of these units they're going to look exactly the same all right so you have all four of your quadrants done so let's go ahead and make a half so let's put two quadrants together there you go again we're going to mark we're going to pin okay same old same old you know the drill and it doesn't really matter which fabric you mark on to mark that seam there just so you can see it that's all i'm going for since i'm flipping this over and that's going to be my seam this is where i'm going to mark [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] and i will down here where it meets i will go ahead and pin right there so i know everything's all nice and even when i get to the end let's go ahead and put one or two pins up here and this may not be even either when you meet these these might be one might be longer than the other this is this is a great thing it's it's even so that's good don't worry if it's not because that'll be part of when you're trimming your top [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] here's another tip make sure you stop sewing before you put your finger under there to grab your pin or that needle bar will hit your finger and it doesn't feel very good ask me how i know all right two halves are together guess what we're gonna do we're going to press those seams open once again [Music] that looks great it looks even across the bottom let's move over here so this looks great it's even across the bottom there this looks good this intersection here i was i kind of watched that sometimes that's my favorite intersection because especially with this because the background is so dark up against that yellow i want that to be pretty precise in there all right so you're going gonna make two halves and then we're gonna join them into a hole okay so there's our two halves we're gonna turn those into a whole quilt here so guess what we're going to do we're going to mark all the way across both sides once again so let's turn this so i can mark mark mark [Music] so [Music] if you notice too i usually start pinning here on a fabric not necessarily at the end i do that last and that's because i'm more concerned about lining these up than i am those outsides [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] and this middle when i'm pinning it should go right in the middle your pin should go right in the middle of where those seams meet and then it also should come out where those seams meet on the back side and then you know that your center is centered okay and that will be a little tricky to put that extra pin in there because it is a lot of there's a lot of fabric there but [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay i'm gonna go back up here pin this then we're ready to go to the machine again all righty are you excited it's your last seam you guys yay [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] all right let's go press this i'm going to go ahead and press this seam open when i'm pressing it open for no other reason then there's a lot of seams here meeting and it'll lay a little bit flatter than if you were to press to one side okay and flip it over and give it a press from the front all right you guys and there's your lone star yay [Music] all righty there it is in all its glory okay all right so how do we get rid of all this so we're going to trim that so what i do is i go around on each of my sides and i'm looking oh i've got a good inch there and i've got a good inch here inch and an inch that looks good i'm gonna have an inch here i know so at least an inch there so i bet they'll be an inch here so what i'm looking still looking at i'm lining up this inch there's an inch i'm right at my point here i'm right at my point here i've got an inch so i'm just going to leave it an inch if you'd like you can come back in and you can make yours a quarter of an inch so when you add your next border your border will hit it exactly at the point i like mine to float it's called floating when the points don't exactly meet your next color so i like mine to float so what i'm gonna do if you have a big square ruler at home too this is a great place to use it i'm going to go ahead i'm laying this inch mark right here on my point i'm just going to cut that away then i'm going to move over here i'm going to lay the ruler even with this edge to make sure i have a nice angle here and i'm going to cut this next corner and i will go around and do that to the whole quilt top till you have a nice square quilt and it's ready for your borders all right so now you know how to make a lone star quilt we went over a bunch of things today we went over borders a little bit you can put one border on you can put as many borders as you like if you want your quilt to get larger just keep adding borders have fun with that you may decide to change your points on your lone star maybe what you thought was going to be your outside points at the beginning of your sewing maybe they'll become your center before you add that background fabric don't be afraid to play with your diamonds maybe point those diamonds with your outside points on the center maybe you'll like that better just play also what i have found maybe you want to scrap up your lone star take a look at this lone star that i did using a jelly roll now you must be careful when you're starching your jelly roll strips do a test strip i found that my jelly roll strip only shrunk in length and only a little bit not width so you still have that i still had that two and a half inches i also cut my jelly roll strips into 11 inch strips to make it even scrappier out of 11 inch strips you can get two strip sets and i went ahead and made the same amount that i would need for the for the same size that we did and i had a ball then i made too many i had plenty left so i did that fun inside border but have fun i really enjoy doing the jelly roll i hope you enjoyed this class with me in missouri star quilt company have a great day hi everybody it's jenny from the missouri star quilt company we hope you enjoyed watching this video if you aren't already part of the missouri star quilt company family be sure to subscribe so you won't miss a thing and if you click that bell it'll notify you every time a new tutorial comes out see you next friday [Music]

Channel: Missouri Star Quilt Company

Views: 53,278

Rating: 4.942678 out of 5

Keywords: MSQC, Missouri Star Quilt Company, Missouri Star, Jenny Doan, Jennie Doan, Genny, Jenny, Ginny, Doan, quilting, quilt, quilt tutorial, quilting tutorial, free quilting tutorial, sewing, sewing tutorial, tutorial, quilting precuts, pre-cut fabric, sewing fabric, how to quilt, learn to quilt, quilting lessons, free quilting, free quilt class, free quilting classes, how to sew

Id: GvxN0wCqwN8

Length: 54min 33sec (3273 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021