Following on from my last post about my "Mild or Wild Stars" quilt with the Love Circle, I bring you.... wildly liberated stars!

The process for going wild is very simple - if you made the mild version, you'll quickly catch on. The hardest part for me doing these wild versions to to let go. To stop my brain from wanting to measure everything and square everything up. You almost need to think of it like a gym workout - do a few mildly liberated squares to warm up, then really get your heart pumping and go wild!

Step one:

Start by cutting out eight or nine background shapes - squares or rectangles. I like to use scissors because I can't cut straight with scissors to save my life, so it helps with the liberation. Your shapes should be only roughly the same size and definitely not the same shape. You want nine shapes only if you want your star center to the the same as your background. If you want the center to match your points, make a squareish or rectanglish shape out of the points fabric. Or use something completely different. I made a kind of wonky HST by sewing two scrap triangles together for one of mine - that's fun too!

Step two:

Step 2: star points - triangles and rectangles

Now cut out eight shapes to use for your star points. They can be triangles or rectangles or anything with at least one long side. I always seem to have lots of triangles and rectangles in my scrap bins so this is great for using those up.

Step three:

Step 3: place your points and background together and sew

Grab some background shapes and start sewing points onto them, just like you did with the mildly liberated stars. Just place your two fabrics right-sides facing and sew them together at an angle with a 1/4 seam. The only thing you need to think about here is that your points fabric will cover the background fabric when you flip it over. Do not worry about whether you will have enough seam allowance to keep your points pointy. Blunted points are wonderful!

Step four:

Step 4: trim off your excess points fabric

Press the seam between the point and background. Flip it over and cut off the excess points fabric around your corner. No need to be perfectly square or careful here, just lose the extra fabric.

Step five:

Step 5: trim excess background fabric along seam

Flip the unit over again and trim the excess background fabric along your seam line. This helps reduce bulk which will make quilting easier.

Step six:

Step 6: Place your second points on and sew

Place your next point on the opposite corner of your background fabric. Sew together, trim the corner, flip and trim the background fabric, as in steps 4 and 5.

Step seven:

Make some rows. Resist the urge to think about this too much. Apart from making sure you have a point block where it should be, and a center in the center etc, just make three rows. Don't worry too much about the future.

Step eight:

Step 9: Trim up any radical bits between rows.

Now that you have three rows, you may need to do a little trimming so that you can sew them together. If there are any radically uneven bits, trim them off.

Step nine:

Sew your rows together. Your corners and seams will not line up! That's what we want here. You can choose exactly where you'd like the rows to come together - slide them back and forth a bit to see what you like, then sew them together.

Step ten:

Press your seams. Admire your beautiful liberated star! Now you can square it up to whatever size you would like. Or rectangle it up. Or leave it be and wait until you're ready to join it up to some other stars. Again, please do not worry about your blunting your star points. If you don't have a couple of blunt points, you're probably not liberated enough yet. Have a glass of wine and start over. :)

I hope you try making a few liberated stars and that you enjoy it as much as I do. I could make these all day. I can't wait to put together dozens of them in a quilt. I think they twinkle a little brighter than perfect stars, don't you?