Easy & Elegant Lone Star Quilts

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Stunning Lone Stars the easy way: All the WOW Without the Work!

• Create a Lone Star bed-size quilt in a snap!

• Just 16 pieces of large-scale prints make a big, gorgeous Lone Star

• 6 quilt projects with full-size patterns and step-by-step instructions

• Luscious Lone Stars everyone - beginners to advanced quilters - can master

• Tips for selecting fabric that will make your star shine!

Author: Shirley Stutz

96p, color + pullout

Read an excerpt from Shirley below:
One-Block Quilts: Easy and Elegant
Have you ever owned a piece of fabric that was just too beautiful to cut into? For several years my collection of large-scale, elegant fabrics had grown to enormous proportions, but I had not cut into one single piece. While working with various sizes of eight-pointed star blocks, I noticed my tendency to keep pushing the block size larger. I kept the area within the block interesting by cutting diamonds with identical designs. After completing a beautiful quilt created with six 32" eight-pointed star blocks, I wondered what a one block, eight-pointed star quilt would look like.
I sprinted over to my "special stash" fabric to select a really large print. Since this would be an experimental project, I pulled my least favorite fabric from the stack before me. The piece included both very large paisley elements and 8" flowers (fabric selection pictured above).

The next step was to draw a large diamond. I arbitrarily chose 20" for the length of each side of the diamond. Working on newsprint, I quickly drew my template. I didn't wait to draw the two background pieces - a square and a triangle - but instead began cutting large fabric diamonds. As each diamond was lined up exactly on the print as the one before, cut, then placed on the design wall, the new pattern began to emerge. It was unbelievable. My least favorite fabric was transformed into an incredible design right before my eyes (quilt pictured at left).
How exciting to realize that I had found a very easy way to produce an incredibly elegant quilt from just eight diamonds, four squares, and four triangles. Here was a way for quilters to finally cut into those wonderful large-print fabrics without destroying the beauty of the fabric. With this technique, new designs will always evolve within the star making it possible to create a truly elegant quilt using simple, large-scale templates.

With just one block per quilt, would all the quilts look alike? On the contrary, each quilt develops its own personality, with unlimited options for borders, plus many background piecing and appliqué options. In experiments with this pattern, no two quilts are alike in any way. Even when I cut sixteen diamonds exactly alike, the two quilts are vastly different if the diamonds are reversed.
The size of the central one-star block in my quilts ranges from 65" to 90". The size of the three pattern pieces requires some special care in cutting and piecing, which is detailed in Chapters 4 and 5.

When I made Twin Number 1 (quilt pictured at left, fabric selection below), I just cut the pieces, sewed the quilt together, and then measured to see how large the quilt block was. Quilters want to know how to make a specific size quilt, so the step-by-step process to determine the template sizes is an integral part of my book, Easy & Elegant Lone Star Quilts: All the WOW Without the Work!. Charts are also included, based on every 5", for those who shy away from doing the math to determine appropriate sizes. A system for drawing accurate templates using ordinary quilting tools is explained. For your convenience, the pullout section has full-sized pattern pieces to trace.
Take your time to learn the whole process on your first Elegant Lone Star quilt. The second quilt will require just two hours to cut, and two hours to piece the entire one-block quilt. Amazing!

There are many tips for fabric selection, cutting with accuracy, and piecing the block using a no set-in seams technique. Projects offer background piecing choices and varied border options.
Teaching Elegant Lone Stars the past five years has convinced me this is not a pattern to be made only once. The search for appropriate large-scale prints from which to construct new and different Elegant Lone Star quilts has just begun. You will constantly hunt for any kind of print with a large motif: flowers, leaves, fish, animals, and more. Each time you cut one of these wonderful prints, you will become the creator of a new and exciting design. Enjoy the journey!

- by Shirley Stutz, excerpted from Easy & Elegant Lone Star Quilts

Easy & Elegant Lone Star Quilts

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