LE: Circling Stars

The stars are fiddly work, but there's no doubt about it - once you have them made, they look wonderful. Like all the applique in this quilt, preparation is key: create a production line and keep things on track. 

Another thing I will suggest is to always make 1 or 2 extra pieces, sometimes fabrics can just look wrong at no fault of your own - it might be the angle of the print or some other detail that creates a distortion - I often move around my shapes, even those made from the same fabrics as the details can vary, so always have one extra for swapping over. 

These are stars but they look like leaves in their individual pieces, there are 6x leaves to each star. When you have 6x leaves neatly turned, thread them onto a needle. The fraying you see here is from fabric turned back, the fronts are clean and precise!

thread them on, keeping any colour order as desired, so that they are all sitting on the length of the needle

thread through neatly and on the same point of each, which is slightly to the side of the centre point

thread your needle through the 6 leaves

create a loop with your thread

and gently pull

but as you pull, arrange the stars into their correct shape, so that they don't bunch

guide the leaves into their correct position and pull the thread fully

Now turn over your star and secure the position with a few neat stitches

front and back of the star

The biggest advantage of doing it this way is that you can create a star production line and then sew down all your stars at once. It saves you from stitching down 6x individual leaves directly onto the fabric to 'create' the star, this way you create the stars before your sew the shape down and this makes neater shapes. Of course this is just my own method and every quilter will have their own style and preference. 

Did you make these stars? How did you sew them down?