Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a really fun project for you today. Let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. This is our block right here that we’re talking about. And it is made up of two old familiar blocks, the half square triangle and the four patch. We’ve then added this awesome friendship star sashing and I’m going to show you how. It’s really easy and really fun. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is two packs of five inch squares. That’s 42 five inch square. And we’ve used Garden Notes by Cathy Schmitz for Moda. They’re just a beautiful little fabric. You’re also going to need some background fabric for your squares and your sashing. That’s 2 ¼ yards. And then you’re going to need your outer border is 1 ¼ yards right here. And you’re going to need some contrasting fabric for your little stars in here. And to make those you are going to need a ½ yard of just that little contrasting fabric. If you want this could be made also out of your border fabric. That’s just not how we did it. So just make sure that you, you look at all the options that you have and make this your own quilt.

So to make this block, it’s comprised of two blocks that are pretty familiar to us. We’ve got half square triangles right here and a four patch. So the first thing we’re going to do is make our half square triangles. And you can see that they’re all made out of the same color. That’s, this block is commonly known as a Friendship Star. And what we want to do is choose two charms out of, one charm out of each pack so you have two of the same color. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our charm like this. So we’re going to lay a five inch white background square right on top of it. We’re going to set our ruler on the side, diagonally corner to corner, draw us a line. Because to make half square triangles you know there’s probably several different ways to make these. But sometimes you want to make them a certain way because you have a certain pre cut or because you just want a certain size. So when you put a five inch line diagonally on a five inch square and we’re going to sew on either side. When you do that you end up with a half square triangle that’s 4 ½ inches and that’s what we’re going for. So we’re going to go over to the sewing machine and we are going to sew a quarter of an inch on either side of this line right here to make our half square triangles. When I get to the end I just flip it around and come down the other side. I’m lining up my presser foot on the line so that it comes out just right.

Alright now we’re going to cut this in half on our line just like that. And we’re going to press it open. And then we’re going to square these up. I’m going to show you how to square them. What you need is a ruler that has a 45 line on it, a square ruler. And you’re going to put your, your square down and you’re going to line that 45 right up on your seam, ok? So then what we’re going to do is we’re going to pull this square back until it reaches the size. Now my square has a half an inch out here. I want this block to be 4 ½ so I put my, my 4 ½, my line back here on the 4 ½ and I count over to make sure, one, two, three, four, and a half. And I’m going to trim up these corners. I like to square up anything like any kind of block like this that I’m setting with another block because it will just help your whole block go together much more smoothly. So again this line lines up on the edge of my, my square. I make sure that my diagonal line is right on that seam. I’m going to hold this down and I’m going to trim off. And you can see these are sewn pretty close. We’re just cutting off itsy bits. So again, let’s do that again so you can see that. So here we are. Our outer line, 4 ½ inches is on the edge of our block. Our 45 line is right on the seam. It looks like, now this one interesting, it looks like we have a little more to cut off on this one. So we’re going to trim that off. And then I’m going to flip this around and do it again. Make sure, make sure all my edges are nice and straight and just a little trim there and a little trim there. And that’s how you square up a half square triangle. Alright you’re going to do that to two five inch squares so you now have four of these. And that means when we get ready to assemble our block, those are our four points for our friendship star.

The next block we’re going to make is the four patch. And we’re, there’s, again there’s lots of ways to make a four patch. We’re going to choose the scrappy four patch method which means we’re going to take our background square and our colored square, put them right sides together like this and just sew the sides, alright? So let’s go to the sewing machine and just sew the sides. There we go. Just one side here. We’re going to turn it around and sew the opposite side. Alright. So now, see on our block right here we’ve sewn both sides and we’re going to cut this in half. I have this awesome little ruler that’s 2 ½ so it sits right on that edge. And I’m going to cut this right in half just like that. Now we’re going to press this open and I’m going to leave my dark to the top so that my dark automatically presses or my seam automatically goes to the dark side. So we’re just going to fold that back right here and iron that back as well.

Alright now what we’re going to make a whole bunch of those, mix them up and sew them together like this so they go, you know, opposites, so they stagger. So I’m going to put one of these here and I’m going to match up these two seams right here. And I’m going to sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. And we’re going to do this to our whole batch that we’re going to make for our half square, I’m sorry, not, these are called. Not half square triangles, four patches. I almost got lost there. I had a little brain, a little brain fog. Alright. So once you get all your little end pieces, I mean all your little half pieces sewn on, we’re going to iron this flat. And then the fun part comes in that we’re going to go ahead and trim off this first, this first 2 ¼ inch piece. Because It’s going to be sewn on here to the other side. So if you’ll just hang with me a minute, you’ll see what I’m doing here. So I’m just going to put this over here until later. This piece right here this should measure 2 ¼ and I’m going to cut 2 ¼ because what we’re allowing for is our seam here in the middle, a quarter of an inch. So I’m going to cut each one of these right in the middle like that, right in the middle again, here we go. Right in the middle. And it gives us these perfect little four patches and one more time over here. We just have to allow, normally they’d be, you think in your brain in half but because we’ve already taken a seam in you have to cut at 2 ¼. And so we’re going to come over here and cut that. You can then go back and sew these two together and make another four patch as well. So now we have these cool four patches that we’re going to use in our corners and I get to show you how to assemble the block.

So now it’s time to assemble your blocks. You’ve got your half square triangles and you’ve got your four patches and when you take a seam on these they go from being five inches to 4 ½. So we need a square for the middle. You’ll see that right here. And we have to cut that down to 4 ½ so it matches. So I’m going to take, I’m actually going to take one of these, I love words on fabric. So I’m going to pull these little words out of here. And we have to cut that down to 4 ½. So again we’re going to take our little four square mat, I mean our squaring up ruler. I’m going to set this edge on the edge and I’m going to cut a half an inch off on here on two sides like this. Now this middle block will line up exactly with our other blocks. So let me show you how we lay this out. So this is how you put a friendship star together. You’re going to actually make sure, let me actually look at one of these so I can make sure so you make sure that your, your, the biggest part of your fabric is touching the center square. And we’re going to do that all the way around like this. So here we go. And if you ever get one side, like one time I put one on like this. If you ever get one and you see it where it goes straight in a line like that, that’s wrong. Stop and give it a turn. Because I do that every once in awhile. Oop see there we go again. Alright so that is our friendship star. Now our little squares are going to go in the corner just like this. And I put my color to the corner. I mean actually I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s kind of the brighter color. So this is one of those things where you can do it scrappy or however you want to do it. But I put my color, my, so not my background but my color toward the star. And one more over here.

So then what we get to do is we’re going to sew three rows of three together and assemble the block. And I’m pretty sure, I’m pretty sure you guys can do that. We’re just going to lay these over, sew a quarter of an inch and go ahead and assemble our block. And when we get done our block is going to look like this. We’re going to have the star points that are one color. Our four patches are going to be set so that the colors come in toward the center. And that’s our block. So now comes the sashing part. So I’m just going to set this aside and we get to do sashing.

Now your sashing is this part right here, just like this. That’s our sashing strip. One of those goes in between every block. Now the sashing strip is going to be the length of your block. You’re going to measure your block. And your block should be about a 12 ½ inch block. And you know that depends entirely on your seam allowance so don’t die over that if it’s a little different. We’re just looking at making them pretty much the same size. So we’re going to cut a piece of fabric from our background fabric, a 2 ½ inch square and sub cut those into 12 ½ inch strips so it covers the full length of our block. But before we sew this together we need to attach our little corners that’s going to make that friendship star in the center. And those little corners, let me see, where do I have them here. I”m getting a little messed up over here. Oh here they are, alright. So those little corners here are going to go on each end. I’m going to finger press a crease. And we’re going to put these on each end. Now the trick to this, all the sashings are made exactly the same, that’s the easy part. The trick is they have to go the same direction. So when we go to sew these on, you’re going to sew this way and this way. Alright? Do you see what I’m doing here? We’re sewing the same direction on both of these. So let’s go sew. We’re going to sew right on the line we pressed, right down the center. And we’re just going to go right across here, right down that center. And then we’re going to come down here and we’re going to do the same thing, go the same direction and sew right on that line. Once you get these sewn on you can trim off those edges. And I like to, I’m just going to go ahead and trim those off. We’re going to iron this back like this. And you just want to make sure that all your sashings are the same. I had a little guy hanging on there. There we go. Alright I’m going to press this out. There we go. Alright.

Now I have a little stack of these. And I have some blocks. So let me show you how this is going to go together because this little sashing, now this is a fun sashing. I did a tutorial on the friendship star sashing and I just thought since we were making a friendship star block, this would the perfect sashing. And it really kind of makes this quilt come together. So you’re going to put those in between every block as you put your blocks together. You can see they’re in here, right here. And then when you go put your rows together you’ve got to put this row of sashing in. Now this row of sashing is made up of these same pieces but in between every one you’re going to put a 2 ½ inch square that’s the same color as these. So look how this is going to go in here. See how that fits, alright? And then when you’re ready to put your next block on, it will have its sashing sewn right to it right here. And it will make that little star form. It makes that little star form in the center there. And so then you have these big friendship stars, your four patch blocks and this friendship star sashing. It all comes together to make this gorgeous quilt.

So this quilt ends up being 68 by 68. It’s a great little size, fun projects. These are blocks we’re familiar with. So we hope you, oop wait one more thing, one more thing. You’re going to need 4 ¼ yards of backing for this quilt. Look at how awesome that is. I almost forgot to tell you. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Garden Stars quilt from the MSQC.