Play Time

I've been working hard to stay focused on my UFO projects from last year, but when this Accuquilt die came in the mail, I had to take some time out to try it out. 

Bea at Beaquilter showed some fun options using the new Hunter's Star and hexagon dies and had a drawing--I was so lucky to win. I discovered Bea's blog last year when I was working at learning my Electric Quilt software. She has tons of tutorials on EQ, as well as other useful quilting information. Be sure to check her out HERE, she is so creative (and smart!).

This is my light fabric on the die after discarding the waste.
There is a pattern included with the die, so I decided to go with that for my first attempt at a Hunter's Star quilt. The pattern calls for 4.5 yards each of light and dark fabric. I had this piece of white on white print that I had purchased as a remnant. It's a wide backing fabric, so I wasn't sure if I had 4.5 yards, but I did some calculations and figured it would work out. It did. Whew! 

This is the waste from one of my dark fabrics.
 I am using scrappy blues as my dark.
You need to pre-cut 120 4" x 10.5" rectangles of the dark and light fabrics to lay on the die. Each die cut equals a light or dark half of one unit. You can cut up to six layers at a time, but I did four layers since I would need four units for each block. I felt it made it easier to keep track of how many I still needed to cut.

I was able to cut everything for the quilt in a few hours--including pressing time.
Usually those shapes would have to be cut using templates--the die makes quick work of the cutting.

All of the dog ears are already trimmed off, so the piecing is super easy.

See how nicely they fit together?

Once I figured out the pressing, putting the rest of the block together was a piece of cake!

Four of these units make a block.
I wanted all four units of my blocks to match even though the whole blocks in the quilt will be scrappy, so I had to cut the blue fabrics in multiples of four.
I plan to make another Hunter's Star that will be totally scrappy and multicolored.

First block complete--yay! Twenty nine to go!
There are all kinds of bias edges going on, so I have to remind myself to go easy on my aggressive pressing tendencies.

These are my first six scrappy blocks--I'm loving how graphic it's going to be!
Linking up to Bea here.