There were a few swaps on the Inklingo list in 2007. One of those swaps was of one-inch squares. Now that the Christmas rush is over, I want to do some hand piecing and wanted to do something with those one-inch squares.

A 25-patch centre seemed like a start. Then I decided to turn them into 10″ star blocks using the flying geese method in Inklingo.

The stars will be scrappy, although each will be made using striped fabric. Why stripes? It seemed like a fun idea.

For each star, I need 8 HST’s, one 6.25″ square of the neutral and 4 3″ squares of the same neutral.
Lining up four of the printed HST’s on the large square, two lines are sewn — one on each side of the centre line.

Once sewn, cut along the centre line and press.

Line up two more of the HST’s on the remaining corner and sew on both sides of the centre line.

Cut apart on the centre line and press and you have the perfect star point unit — actually four perfect flying geese from one large square of neutral and 8 HST’s.

No cutting fabric with specialty rulers, no fussing trying to deal with stretchy bias edges. Just perfect units each time.

For me, it’s great. I love hand piecing, so will hand piece the 25-patch centres and put the blocks together by hand once I’ve made the flying geese units on the machine. This is nice relaxing work after the Christmas table runner assembly line I seemed to have been on! 🙂