Scrappy Asterisk Tutorial

These are my 4x5 bee blocks for this quarter!

(Inspired by this & this on flickr)

They were so much fun to make!

And a great way to use up scraps - even teeny tiny scraps!

There is a great tutorial here on how to make asterisk blocks,

but I wanted mine scrappier.  And with a border, to use more scraps.

Here's how I made them:

Start with a 6.5 inch white square, and a bunch of 1 inch strips of scraps.

(you could really use any size square, depending on your scraps--

starting at 6.5 inches gave me a total finished block size of 12.5 inches--

what I needed for the 4x5 modern bee blocks)

Cut the 6.5 inch square on the diagonal once.

You can use either one long 1 inch strip,

or 2 shorter strips, sewn together.

For this block I'm going super-scrappy,

so I'm using 2 strips! 

To sew the strip to the white triangle,

first crease the triangle in half,

then line up the seam of the scrappy strip with the seam,
 and pin. 

(it doesn't have to be perfect)

When you have both sides of the strip sewn, press seams inwards.

 

Now cut in half on the diagonal,

 trying to cut very close to the seam of the 2 initial scrappy strips.  Don't worry if the cut isn't perfect (mine wasn't) -- you'll lose it in the seam allowance. 

Keep going!

Once you've got the 2 diagonal scrappy strips sewn, sew the vertical piece,

 then the horizontal.  

 It looks like here I'm using 1 strip, instead of 2 sewn together, opps!

I guess this scrap was longer than the others!

 For the "top" strip -- the last vertical piece, you can either use one strip (as above),

or two -- but if you use two,

sew a 1 inch square of your background fabric between the 2 scrappy strips.

Here is the finished asterisk!

It would be fine to stop here, but I wanted to make it wonky,

and use up more scraps in a border.

 Cut 2 rectangles, one 4 x 8.5, the other 4 x 10.5 inches.

 Now cut diagonally, at about 3 inches on the top left, to 1 inch on the bottom left, creating 2 "sort-of" triangles.

 Lay out triangles like this, and sew each side.

 Square up to 8.5 inches.

 Now add a 1 inch scrappy strip border on all sides,

then a 2 inch white strip after that.

 Finished!

 And here's how neat the back looks, with seams all pressed inwards.

 Here's another modification,
if you have smaller scraps and like this look better:

Or try gray for the background:

 Or try an all red scrappy asterisk

(bottom left block):

What a great use of scraps!

I hope that you've enjoyed the tutorial --

please let me know if you have any questions!

Be sure to check out all of the amazing projects and ideas

 being shared at Rachel's Scrap Attack Quilt-Along on flickr!

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