Quiltmaker’s Scrap Squad is a select group of eight QM readers. They take one pattern from each regular issue and make scrappy versions to inspire you.
This is the current issue of Quiltmaker, dated Nov/Dec ’13.
Star Search from the Nov/Dec issue of Quiltmaker
The Scrap Squad quilt for this issue was designed and made by Carolyn McCormick, designer of the Add-A-Quarter ruler. It’s called Star Search.
Gina Elias
Today’s featured quilt is by Gina Elias from Spring Valley, Illinois. You’ll hear from Gina in her own words below. Be sure and read to the end, because there is definitely a punch line!
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This quilt uses TEMPLATES! That word turns so many quilters off and they don’t consider making a quilt that involves templates. But templates shouldn’t be feared or avoided, in my opinion. Here was my approach in making this quilt.
First I made some templates out of mylar plastic. I do something different here—I make the templates without the seam allowances.
Even though the pattern in the magazine doesn’t give you a template for piece A, I made one. Remember—it’s without the seam allowance so the template is 3″ x 4″.
Each star has 4 of patch B and 4 of patch C. Since my stars were going to be “controlled scrappy” (each star made from the same fabric), I decided to glue those 8 pieces on an 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper with as little waste as possible.
I scanned that sheet of paper into my computer and used a photo editing program to take out the letters and arrows. I saved it as a pdf. Below is the result.
Now comes the fun part! I cut 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheets of freezer paper and ironed them to the right side of my fabric. I fed my fabric into my printer and I had my shapes printed out right on my fabric!
You can see the cutting lines on even the dark and busy fabrics. I peeled the fabric off the freezer paper and then cut the shapes apart. Did I use scissors or a rotary cutter? Both. I have a lot of time in the car waiting for the kids to get done with events, so sometimes I brought the fabric and scissors and used that time.
Wild and Goosey is perfect for using small scraps. Block by Bonnie Hunter for Quiltmaker’s May/June ’13 issue.
Was there wasted fabric? Yes. But I saved those pieces for small paper piecing patterns like Bonnie Hunter’s Wild and Goosey block published in Quiltmaker’s May/June ’13 issue.
I used the same process to make a lot of A templates with the computer. I drew them by hand on an 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper. Using my pdf, there was very little waste fabric on these. I used both the computerized pieces and the plastic templates, depending on the size of my scraps.
The advantage to making templates without the seam allowance is that your drawn line is the seam line. Sewing is easy—just pin the intersections and sew on the line.
Since this design is made in diagonal rows, I like to work on two ends at once.
I piece a lot of on-point quilts like this so that when I get tired of the project, I can just piece a middle row and then I’m done. 
For this quilt, I emphasized the diamond shape by placing the colors to form a diamond.
Now for the quilting: I wanted to emphasize the diamond shape and the color placement. I decided on custom quilting alternating straight lines with large flowing free-hand feathers.
The stars measured 10″ from point to point. I originally thought my straight line quilting would be 2″ apart, but I ended up filling those in with 1″ line segments.
The final quilt front:
The final quilt back:
Close-up of the quilting:
I named this quilt “Illinois Fall” because these are the colors of the trees right now in my neck of the woods.
Also, I had procrastinated on this quilt and it was coming close to my deadline. I started getting up at 5:30 am to get an hour of quilting done before work. On one such morning, I headed downstairs before I was fully awake and missed the first step. Down I tumbled… hence, Illinois Fall! (I was fine – I just don’t bounce as well as I used to!)