Michael Miller Mondays with Starfish

No, not the kind that swim in the sea! The kind that you can paper piece with fabric and imagine that the blocks ARE starfish. A few weeks ago I showed 6 blocks I had made using the Festival of Lights fabric by Michael Miller. This is as far as I could go as I only had a fat quarter of the white Fairy Frost. My plan was to make 16 and arrange them in my new favorite setting.

6 Starfish blocks

This is a foundation pattern I designed about 15 years ago and never took the time to stitch. Well, it's about time! I decided to make 8 with the blue and 8 with the red (also Fairy Frost). I pulled fabrics that I wanted to use with the Festival of Lights fabric.

Fairy Frost fat quarters

This is how I began to plan. Did you see the Hanukkah dreidel quilt from a few weeks ago?

More fabrics together

I started stitching, all with Fairy Frost:

My foundation pattern with the first 3 patches

I trimmed from the wrong/written side of the paper and these are the cutaways. Now I'm ready for the next patches which will be white.

Trimming the two gold patches

Here is how it looks from the front with the waste pieces of gold.

First real trims

I continued piecing, adding the blues for 8 blocks and reds for the other 8 blocks.

Back of pattern after I trimmed around all sides

Now it's time to take the paper off. I ALWAYS take the paper off before joining these to their neighboring blocks or units. You CANNOT join a concave and convex unit with the paper on. You MUST make friends with the bias edges. You need them to work together!

After the paper is removed

Now, let's see some of the blocks together.

Four blocks, one is turned 180 degrees!

Why is this? Well, let's now look at the center.

Four center blocks

Now you're really confused, right? I don't blame you. But I'm not trying to trick you. When you make four of the first set of blocks and then put them together, you will get this:

Festive Starfish Quilt

Isn't this a fun arrangement? Rather than a ho-hum set of blocks like the center (repeated 4 times), you end up with the illusion of five blocks!

I have the 8 page pattern in my Etsy shop. I share a special page on how to sew four borders around a 34" center without having to piece them. It's all about the log cabin. That's all I'm saying. The beauty of a digital pattern is that you can print as many foundations as you like and even make a king size quilt (go for it!).

Go check out my Festive Starfish pattern which has detailed pre-cutting of those patches so you can paper piece quickly and easily. Lots of illustrations and full size templates and foundations. And color throughout!