Happy Halloween!

I find it hard to understand why anyone should be wished a Happy Halloween, as the whole notion of Halloween is about ghosts, witches, horror and death, but I suppose I'm in a minority with that thought! Anyway, although it is an American tradition, I will welcome any children who come trick or treating tonight with my lovely pumpkin hanging on my front door! (Quite what they'll make of it, I'm not sure!) . Tonya corrected my last post, in that the paper cutting wasn't meant to provide templates for the block, but was just a way of learning how to think in strips. The blocks are all free pieced. Thanks for that, Tonya - just shows how patient I am, that I can't even manage to read the instructions properly!

The writing at the bottom of the hanginging doesn't stand out too well, but at least it throws the emphasis onto the pumpkin!

My friend Jane has lent me a fascinating book called 'Stars by Magic' by Nancy Johnson-Srebro. It shows how to make lone star blocks without cutting triangles or dealing with the dreaded Y seam. Of course, I had to have a go and instead of starting with the easiest block (block 1, would you belive?) I started on block9. Here are the pieces I cut for this block.

All squares and rectangles, but quite a few of each, as you'll agree.

The block is very impressive, and the instructions are very clear, but beware - even on Halloween, magic doesn't come into it! Accuracy comes into it, and as you'll see, if you look closely at the block, I had to do a bit of fudging to get the diamonds to fit together, and I think more fudging will be necessary if I want all my yellow diamonds to have points!

One downside for this method is the left overs, which are not insignificant. (They aren't really fuzzy like this, I think they jumped when I clicked the camera.)

Nancy helpfully says you can 'discard the cut off triangles or save for another project'. Discard the triangles! Who is this woman that she can cheerfully drop large pieces of fabric into the bin? I've got into the habit of saving crumbs to make Chaos Crumb blocks, so the idea of dropping a triangle of fabric which is half of a 6 inch square into the bin, isn't one which appeals!

However, these are minor criticisms. The book is great and has clear instructions for 30 different star blocks in up to 10 sizes, and certainly cuts out the tricky Y seams. Now I have to decide what I'm going to do with a 12" lone star block. Perhaps I'll put it in my UFO box for now...........