Wednesday, July 30, 2014

WWI Block of the Month - French Star and My Country

I guess I have too many "Blocks of the X" projects because I don't seem to have done a post for this series for June.

The June block was My Country - straightforward piecing. I love how when I fussy cut Vicki's deep blue shibori to highlight the whiter parts, it looks like faded denim in this block.



July was French Star. Perhaps there was another way to do this when the block was invented, but the designer of our series gave instructions for raw edge fused applique for the white curved pieces. 

I used foundation paper piecing to make the blue and red star, which was quite pretty without the white applique.  (Sherrye wondered how it was pieced - there's a square of the red in the middle, surrounded by the blue points with a small red right triangle between each pair going around the square, related to an hourglass or quarter square triangle block. The block is put together like a 9 patch around the center square.) The 8 curved applique pieces make an usual block.

I have had a couple of other projects to work on this week, so I have not yet finished the machine stitching around the 34 leaves on the French Star, but that will be done before we see the August block.  I haven't done last weekend's Austen block yet either.

2 comments:

Anna Banana said...

I was wondering when we were going to see more of those blocks with the leafy branches. I read slowly and carefully and understand how you made the block with the white fused pieces. So how would they do that in the olden days? English paper piecing?

Anna Banana said...

Oh, maybe just regular turned edge appliqué, because that's how they would do all those leaves... Right
.