Ohio Star Quilt

Today I have a mini quilt table topper to share :-) - although it seems to have come out a little bigger than I was intending!

This mini quilt came about quite by mistake - when I was in buying fabric for the advent calendar I shared the other week - i bought a 50 cm (x 60" wide) length for the back but it was too narrow! The lighter holly print was originally destined for the back. But when I was in that day an additional print caught my eye. The red was in a precut fat quarter sitting at the till and was bought out of complete impulse! Taking all this into account the total outlay was £7  or £0 as I prefer to think of it because I salvaged a mistake.

I wasn't entirely sure what I would make with these however as i had a good length of both i reckoned some good could come out of them if used together - so after losing a few hours to pinterest I decided that an Ohio Star would be awesome!

I followed the instructions in the August edition of Sew magazine and used my own dimensions cutting the 4 red and 4 white squares to 6" square and the remaining squares to 6.5" square making each up into two 6" HST's.

Some of the points don't look so pointy after quilting...

Usefully I had a length of wadding left from the advent calendar as well as a good amount of the awesome green Christmas print which was more than enough to use for the backing and for the binding.

The binding was cut 2 inches wide and not on the bias - I hate making this stuff enough as it is!! Haha. I think the method I used here was the French binding method... I pinned 1/4 inch from the raw edge of both the quilted sandwich and the strip of binding and folded out in the opposite direction from the quilt at the corners and then back over on itself and along the new edge. I then spent a few hours waiting for the hungover boyfriend to surface hand stitching 1/4 from the raw edge on the back with the raw edge tucked under. My hand stitching won't win any awards but I'm pleased with the results and far prefer this method to my previous topstitching method.

Some squinty lines of quilting and some of the better slipstitched binding

For the quilting part I used the stitch in the ditch method following the piecing lines on the top. I did however find out how to drop the feed dogs so I think the next time I quilt something I'm going to give it a shot. This is also a pattern I want to try again only this time with a repeat and for a double quilt size. Maybe only with one print too

The Corner needs a little work but im pretty happy

I hope you guys like my most recent project - I have no idea what to do with it though right now it's just sitting on the settee casually chilling after being photographed! Also would you believe that my phone takes better pictures in poor light than my camera? Have a good week guys

Reverse of the Quilt

JCS xx