Welcome to the January installment of my Barn Quilt Block of the Month project! This is a personal challenge I decided to give myself in 2017 to keep pushing my pattern-making skills and add to my overall quilting abilities. Each month I’ll pick a cool barn quilt, turn it into an actual block, write up a pattern, and list it in my Craftsy shop.
This month’s block is Dogwood Star! I came across this design on Pinterest and was able to trace it back to a barn quilt displayed on the Mitchell County Historical Society Museum in Bakersville, North Carolina. Most of you already know that I was born and raised in North Carolina, and the NC state flower is the dogwood blossom, so this block feels extra special to me. Since I’d already figured out the pattern for it last fall when I made an oversized 40″ block as a baby quilt, starting with this one was an easy choice. I redid the math a couple weeks ago and drew up new paper-piecing templates to create a more standard 12″ block.
This block pattern — with templates for both the 12″ and 40″ versions — is now for sale in my Craftsy shop.
Making this block requires paper piecing and half square triangles. Instructions on those techniques are not included, but there are plenty of great resources online to help you if you’re not familiar with either technique. One of my favorite sources for both is Blossom Heart Quilts, where Alyce has written excellent tutorials on both — here’s her paper piecing tutorial and here’s the HST tutorial.
I’ll be posting 11 more blocks between now and the end of 2017. By the end of the year I’ll have a nice barn quilt sampler to snuggle!
Get the Dogwood Star Block pattern here!
What a cool challenge for yourself and congratulations on another pattern addition to your Craftsy store. I really like how fun it is to create large, graphic blocks for a quilt.