50. How to Piece a Slash Star Quilt Block

Are you ready? It’s time to piece the very last block of the Building Blocks Quilt! It’s been 10 months since we started this project, we’ve pieced and quilted so many beautiful blocks together and now we’re on the final block – a super simple, ultra funky Slash Star!

free motion quilting | Leah Dayfree motion quilting | Leah Day

Warning: If you are allergic to mismatched seams, break out in hives when piecing with an inaccurate seam allowance, or want to throw up whenever you hear the words “improvisational piecing” this Slash Star might be hazardous to your health.

Or maybe you just need to lighten up a bit!

By now we’ve learned all the rules of piecing and it’s time to break them all as we slash a stack of fabric, piece it back together, and accept our seams wherever they end up. This type of piecing is fun and free form, much like free motion quilting, but no, it will not be perfect, no matter how hard you try.

So please don’t beat your head against a wall when the seams don’t match – they aren’t meant to!

Yes, you can still find the cutting diagram shown in the video, right here in the Building Blocks Quilt Pattern.

free motion quilting | Leah Day

Now that we’ve pieced these stars – how to quilt them? Chances are your stars are going to look a bit different from mine. The quilting design templates included in the pattern are not going to fit perfectly, so you’ll have to get creative and do some improvisational free motion quilting on top of your improvisational piecing.

Oops. I didn’t just make you throw up twice did I?

Lol! I hope you enjoy piecing this funky block and swing back here later this week when we learn how to quilt our first star with Super Star.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

LeahDay

Leah Day has been teaching online since 2009. She's the creator of the Free Motion Quilting Project, a blog filled with thousands of quilting tutorial videos. Leah has written several books including 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs, Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day, and Mally the Maker and the Queen in the Quilt.

3 Responses

  1. Gemma Potts says:

    I love "Stomach lining" because you can tell you were a biology major and looked t sections under the microscope. I was wondering if you have ever made any designs from looking at pond water samples. Some of the microorganisms have such beautiful designs. I love Volvox. I wonder how that might look as a FMQ design! 🙂 (I was a bio teacher for over 20 years).

  2. How about a dab of glue stick behind each section and a revolving cutting mat? So odd to watch a left handed cutter. Read more quilt blogs and you will get used to seeing the modern esthetic. N

  3. I have been enjoying making all the blocks so far. BUT, the slash star block is very disappointing! I kept try to convince myself that they would be fine when finished, but they were not. I made all four of them and by the time they are trimmed down to size, they don't even look like stars any more! Wonky? No, just weird! I really couldn't stand the way they looked. I finally decided to draft a paper piecing pattern by tracing one of the quilting diagrams and breaking it down into four separate sections. Sewing it together is a bit more complicated than your instructions but the block looks like it should and the quilting diagrams will fit the way they should. And I can look at it and smile! Still ripping out the other three blocks because I'm afraid I will run out of fabric if I start them all from scratch.

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