HOW WE DID IT

You really need to pop on over to Donna's blog and read about our "at home retreat".  She tells our story with a bit of a humorous twist.  Daughter #2 summed it up so well when she said, "Mom, I'm really glad you have a friend that gets you."  This was in response to a little fist pumping and something about "THE POWER OF THE STASH!"

Donna came up with a much better stitching method for the star blocks.  No handpiecing for us! She drew out a paper pieced pattern and it worked GREAT!

 My creative contribution? ...

OK ... here we go ...

I drew a 15.5" square onto freezer paper and cut out at 12" circle from the middle.  That was my pattern for the outside part of the star blocks.  I then pressed the paper to the fabric snipped around the inside edges and applied liquid starch to the seam allowance (where it's snipped.)  I just sprayed the starch onto a plastic lid that was headed for the trash and used a little paint brush.

Using the edge of the freezer paper as my guide, I pressed the seam allowance up.

The combination of hot iron, starch and freezer paper gave me a nice crisp finished edge.

Now ... another great creative secret ... glue.  I applied little dots of glue around the outer edge of the pieced star circle, laying the outer part of the block on top.

Set the glue with a hot iron.  Using monofilament thread and a blind hem stitch, I stitched the inside of the circle to the outer block using my MACHINE.  No handpiecing on this part either!

Then we did the same thing with the inner circle ... freezer paper, starch, glue and a hot iron.

Stitch the small center circle using the monofilament and blind hem stitch just like we did the outer circle and ... TA DA ...

We got beautiful blocks all done on the machine with NO hand piecing.  My kind of sewing!!!