Reverse Rainbow Starburst Block – A Tutorial…

I have been wracking and wracking my brains over the last few days to come up with a block for my month {February} for my Sew & Bee-Happy bee ladies to make me. After much indecision I think I’ve finally come up with a plan for my quilt…

I’m thinking along the lines of a rainbow picnic blanket, so I made this very rough little mock up in my Adobe Illustrator {nope no EQ7 in this house} to give them an idea of what I was hoping for…

** Edited to add: You can now read about the finished quilt and see all the pictures here.
But here is the finished version:

The colours are obviously pretty sickly in the example, and the sashing colour is still up for debate (currently I’m pondering grey or a black & white print – that won’t be decided until I have all 12 blocks made) but imagine fabric blocks in the colours of the rainbow with white stars in and you’ll be halfway there.

Here is my sample block:

This is the lighter orange block & there will be another orange block to come which is more a pinky/corally orange, heading more into red.

So here are the measurements & instructions for the block. Feel free to sew along with us. It would make a perfect scrap buster and lends itself to different sizes nicely!!

Ingredients for each 17.5 inch unfinished block:

**  24 of 4×4 inch square of your colour fabric
**  1 of 4 x 4 inch square of your white fabric
**  8 small scraps, approx 4 x 2.5 inch for your wonky star points.

Instructions:

Lay out your coloured fabric squares along with your 4 inch white square (centre of your star) where you would like them in your final block. It works best if you have the largest amounts of different prints possible. I was working entirely from my scrap bin so I had some repeats of some fabrics. If that’s also the case for you then just spread them out evenly in different rows/columns…

Now we want to make our first star point pieces.

Take the coloured squares directly above, below, to the left & to the right of your white square.

With the first one, place one of your white scraps like the photo below…

You just need to make sure than when flipped over the white covers the entire orange corner with no gaps.

Sew using a 1/4 inch seam…

Iron over your white so that it covers the orange corner…

Trim the white flush with the orange square…

Then flip square over and trim the orange corner to be flush with the white so that it is now 1/4 inch seam…

Repeat with the second piece of white like so…

And trim.

Now you should have your first 2 star points…

Repeat with the other 3 coloured pieces so that you have all 8 points of your star made & put them back in your layout…

Time to join our squares together…

Join them together into rows, then join the rows together to make your finished block.

Square up your block to 17.5 inches.

Stand back & admire your reverse Rainbow Starburst Block…
Too easy…

I think this will be a pretty fabulous picnic blanket! But I’m picking it will be a while before it’s finished – perhaps for next Summer?

There goes another new WIP to the pile anyway 😉

Linking up to Fabric Tuesday

Enjoy