How to Piece a Scrappy Tracks Star Quilt Block

It’s time to piece our 11th quilt block for the Friendship Quilt Along! Learn how to piece a Scrappy Tracks star block with me in this quilting tutorial:

Click Here to find this quilt pattern. We are nearly finished with the Friendship Quilt Along, but you can still join in the fun! All of the tutorials and videos will remain online indefinitely so you can join in any time and make a crib, throw, twin, queen or king sized friendship quilt!

Click Here to find the machine I’m using. I love the Eversewn Sparrow 20 because it’s inexpensive, but does piecing, free motion quilting, ruler quilting, and walking foot quilting really well!

Click Here to find the Supreme Slider I use to make piecing easier. This slippery sheet is designed for free motion quilting, but by changing the position you can use it for piecing and walking foot quilting too!

Tips for Piecing with Black Fabric

At some point in the fabric preparation for the Friendship Quilt Along, we ran out of batik black and some Kona solid black slipped in. This isn’t a big deal, but as you can see in the video – those are two different blacks!

Yes, black is one of those tricky colors that has specific dye lots and is noticeable when the fabrics don’t match exactly. The weave of batik fabric is also slightly denser than regular solid fabric too.

To avoid this, make sure to buy more black fabric than you need for any particular project. Even better, buy a whole bolt. Then you’ll be guaranteed that you will have plenty of fabric for multiple projects, the borders, and binding.

But if this does happen to you and you wind up with two different colors of black in your quilt, don’t worry! This really isn’t a big deal. It doesn’t stop your quilt from being a beautiful quilt and if anything, it makes it just a bit more scrappy wonderful!

Piecing a Scrappy Tracks Border

I went into a lot of detail this week on the scrappy tracks border. This style of border is often called “Piano keys” because of the way the pieces line up. The piecing is very simple, but it will test the accuracy of your 1/4-inch seam.

Click Here to watch last months piecing tutorial and learn why I hate scant quarter inch seams!

I made a mistake with my border and pieced the long strip to the wrong side. It wasn’t a big deal, but as you saw in the video, I had to fiddle around a bit before I managed to get the borders lined up with the star in the corner, black strips to the inside of the border, and black strips lining up around the star.

To avoid confusion, refer to the quilt pattern! I should have checked before piecing this block and that would have saved me a good bit of time.

Oh well, as you can see, I’m still learning and growing as a quilter just like you! And there’s definitely no such thing as a perfect king sized quilt. At least not in my house!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

Check out more videos from the Friendship Quilt Along

How to piece Half Square Triangles

Fabric Preparation Tutorial – How to Cut Squares from Scraps

Find ALL Friendship Sampler Quilt Along tutorials linked up here!