Patchwork Star hanging

For my birthday a few months back, I used some of my birthday gift money to buy myself the Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and fabrics (Thank you, family!), which is full of basic techniques for sewing by machine or hand, and lots of other craft techniques and tips. The second half of the book is full of wonderful projects with detailed (and sometimes very confusing) instructions. I already bookmarked a ton of projects, but have decided to start with the Star pattern patchwork.

The instructions in the book are for a 24in finished star, but I thought that was a bit large (imagine the size of frame you'd need to buy for it?) and decided on making a 12in star. I used scraps from 4 different fabrics and interfacing I had left over from the gathered clutch.

The very first step is to apply the interfacing to the back of the fabrics. Here's a helpful tip for ironing on your interfacing: make sure you have the textured side DOWN. It's the adhesive side, and I made the mistake of ironing the interfacing to my damp towel. No worries though, I peeled it off, and ironed it textured side down to the fabric. Phew.

Next, comes the math and ruler part. The instructions call for drawing vertical lines 2 inches apart, and then another set of lines at 45 degrees, two inches apart. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this sort of stuff, so I enlisted Joel's help to mark up the back of the fabrics (the side with the interfacing). You may notice in the photo below that the interfacing is not one solid piece. I made use of all the scraps I had, and just made sure the seams were overlapped when ironing it on.

I carefully began cutting the diamonds with my rotary cutter.

Once your diamond pieces are all cut out, play around with them until you decide on a pattern you like. Below is the one I chose. You can always use more fabrics, but I thought I'd keep it simple and use an even number of fabrics (plus, these are the ones I had handy). I ended up changing the pattern around because I unknowingly flipped a couple of pieces when sewing, but that's okay -- you're allowed to change your mind along the way!

When sewing the individual pieces together, make sure that the right sides are facing each other (IE: the sides of the fabric without the interfacing).

I began by sewing the center pieces together, and then working outwards.

Initially, I sewed an entire star out of 8 diamonds, but I was having a difficult time sewing the additional diamonds to the core star. I ended up taking apart the center seam that joined the two halves together. Once I did this, I quickly basted diamonds to each of the halves and then ran the whole thing through the machine.

And when I was done, I had this:

I still need to sew the Patchwork Star to another piece of fabric before I frame it. Another option is to float it in a frame as is. Now that I've got this first version under my belt, I'm thinking of how to modify, modernize and personalize it. Look out for a different version soon!