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Sawtooth Star Quilt Blocks

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If you take a look at my quilt board on Pinterest there are quite few star quilts. So many that for a while there I had to stop myself from pinning them because it was getting out of hand.

Now the board has more diversity, but there are still tons of star quilts because someday I'd like to make one of my own!

So with that in mind, I thought now would be a good time to make a few star blocks to see if I enjoy the process and can see myself sticking with it to finish an entire quilt.

First I had to figure out how to make a star block. There are a number of different star blocks, but I didn't want to get too fancy about it so I choose the Sawtooth Star. 

Searching for instructions for this classic block turned up lots of free tutorials, but I really just wanted the instructions neatly packaged into a document for storing on my computer.  So off to etsy I went!  And right here I found just the right pattern.

If you want to make a Sawtooth Star block this is a very good pattern. The instructions are straightforward and neatly laid out so they are easy to read.  

The pattern comes with measurements for pieces to make this block in three sizes: 3", 4", 6", and 9". 

The blocks shown here are all 9" blocks. Really they are 9.5" because the sizes are the finished block sizes once sewn together. There's extra 1/4" all the way around to accommodate them being joined together.  

One of the reasons I selected this pattern is the 9" block is perfect for making a queen size quilt. It's not too big and not too small and a standard size for a queen quilt is 90" x 108". 

So it would be 10 blocks wide x 12 blocks high. Only 120 of them!  Haha...that's quite a lot of quilt blocks.  

I did mess up two of them (they don't have quite enough allowance) so there will some unpicking to do if they end up in a quilt.  "Unpicking" is a funny word and perhaps it's not technically a word at all, but it's something you'll need to do from time to time if you sew.  

Fortunately, I've got just the unpicking tool needed in this seam ripper.

This Clover seam ripper is pretty new to me and it's really quite nice and much better than the my old, dull one.  The ergo handle makes it comfy to hold and use and the cutter is super, super sharp.

There are a few more blocks that aren't shown here, so maybe I'm like 10% of the way to the 120 blocks needed?  That makes it sound doable, but we'll see if it actually happens! 

Fabric Bolt Clips for Organizing Your Fabric Stash

Fabric Bolt Clips (AKA: Bolt Buddies)

If you need to get your fabric stash in order--and now is a great time to do it--you might want invest in some of these bolt clips.

Like many of you (maybe all of us?), I've got a lot of fabric and keeping it in some sort organized fashion can be a real challenge.  Until recently, my fabric storage system consisted of hanging some on a clothes drying rack, folding some of the larger pieces/heavier fabrics and placing them in stacking it bins in the sewing room closet, and hanging some up hangers in the same closet. 

But that just wasn't enough, so now I've added in these DIY mini bolts, which are just cut up boxes.  The boxes are an odd size that has never been useful for sending out packages, so they've just been taking up space...for years.  So it's kind of a win-win for me. 

The clips are helping a ton with my mini bolt system.  At first I was trying to just wrap the fabric around the bolts and use regular sewing pins, but that makes a big lump, the pins leave holes, and over time, pins can rust. I didn't want to have holes in the first place, and rusty holes sounded even worse!  These clips are stainless steel so they aren't going to rust any time soon. 

Besides being used for clipping fabric in place, some people also use these clips to hold quilt binding in place while they sew it on.  

Come check them out here or in my etsy shop here.