Fabric Exchange:
Join our fabric exchange and use and share your batik fabrics. By sharing fabrics you’ll be able to make a scrappy quilt with lots of variety. The exchange will be an outdoor event where you can drop off, and at a second date pick up, an equivalent number of pieces. Please see the June 2021 newsletter for further details.

Stretched Star Quilt:
These instructions make a lap size quilt 49.5” x 58.5.

Use fabrics from your own stash and those you get from the VQG fabric exchange to make a “Stretched Star” Quilt from half snowball blocks as follow:

1. Cut the 2½” strips into 2 ½” squares (light neutrals).
2. For each block pick one of your 5” dark or medium batik squares and 2 of the 2 ½” lights.
3. On the wrong side of each of the 2 ½” squares mark a diagonal line in your preferred method.  For example, you can finger press across the diagonal or press with an iron.  Or you can mark a line with a pencil or a marker such as a Hera marker or fabric pen.  Some of you will be confident enough to eyeball the diagonal line.
   (Note: Often the right and wrong-sides of batiks are indistinguishable in which case you do not need to pay attention to which is the right and which is the wrong side.  For those batiks that do have a discernible right side you will need to take care to put right sides together.)
4. Place these marked squares on opposite corners of the 5” square, wrong sides together, and sew on the line you have marked.
5. Trim ¼” away from the sewn line and press towards centre (darker fabric). Your light/dark fabric placement will be the opposite of this illustration:
   
6. Make 99 of these 5” unfinished blocks.
7. Quilt Assembly: Arrange the blocks 9 across, 11 down all facing the same direction.  When you are happy with the layout sew the rows matching the intersections.
8. Border:  Add 5” cut (4.5” finished) borders.

Variations:
These blocks can be set in an X’s and O’s pattern by arranging the blocks in alternating directions.

For more variations see: Missouri Star Quilt TripX’s and O’s Projects with Jenny Doan