Stash Reduction - Tessellating Stars

This is a fun 2” strip project. You can, of course, use any width of strips that you like, but if you have been taking my advice and cutting all of your scraps into 2" or 1 1/2" strips, you may be ready to start sewing! This is one of my all-time favorite patterns.

Divide your strips into 2 piles. I am dividing these into darks (greens) and lights (multicolored). You can divide them any way you like, as long as you have a good contrast between the two groups. For the quilt shown above, I used one group of purple fabrics and one group with orange, burgundy and green fabrics. It is a lower contrast, but I like the way it turned out. Working with clearly defined groups gives you a scrappy but coordinated look and you will see the tessellation effect more clearly.

Sew panels – one dark strip to one light strip – using a ¼” seam allowance. You don’t have to use full-length strips for this. Press the seam allowances toward the darker strip.

Cut 3 ½” slices. (The panel of two strips should be 3 ½” across, so you will have squares. If you are using a different size of strip, measure across your panel to determine the size of the slices. These units should be square.) You need 4 units to make one block, so be sure you have multiples of four. Count your pieced units. For each of these units, cut one 2” square of light fabrics and one 2” square of dark fabrics. If you have 36 pieced units, cut 36 light squares and 36 dark squares.

Having right sides together and raw edges aligned, position a dark square in one corner of the pieced unit, on the light fabric. Stitch diagonally across the dark square. You can mark the diagonal with a pencil or by pressing in a diagonal crease, but I usually just “eyeball” it on these small squares.

Run them through the sewing machine without stopping to break threads and remove them from the machine. Chain a few stitches between units.

Press the square outward toward the corner to create a triangle across the corner of the pieced unit. If you like, you can trim away the layers underneath (the seam allowances) to ¼”. I usually only trim the middle layer or leave them both intact.

Position a light square in the opposite corner of the pieced unit and sew across the square diagonally. Press as before.

Arrange your units in two piles as shown. Sew them into sets of two. Each set of two units constitutes half of the quilt block. Press all of the seam allowances (for this new seam) the same direction on each set.

Sew two halves together to make the whole block. Press. The block should measure 6 1/2”.

You may prefer to use only two fabrics instead of scraps:

Same blocks – one quilt has a light border and one has a dark border!