One is by simply cutting squares and using the combination of squares and HST's to formulate the block. It is a no partial seam method--a cheater method. And it doesn't quite look the same.
Second is a semi-cheater method. This method is composed of the splitting the triangles and the squares to avoid Y seams. It provides some design flexibility as the corner square and the side triangles are split. Nancy Zieman illustrates one method and McCall's quilting, another of accomplishing this traditional block.
Third, is the #$%#$^^ traditional method. This method is composed of the following (see block above) three pieces
1. Corner Squares (qty 4)
2. Diamonds (qty8)
3. Square (qty 1) cut on 2 diagonals to yield 4 QST's
I pulled out my Excel with the goal of creating a table that used base computations to calculate each of the 3 needed components. I will warn you...this will make your head hurt.
I used the How We Sew tutorial for a 5.5" finished block. The key to the block is to identify the divisions of the block. The first division involves finding the length of the corner block. That number involves some calculations.
1. Corner Squares. Find the side measurement of Square 1. Measure the diagonal from the center of the block to the corner. (If you were drawing this you could use a compass). That is 1/2 the diagonal of the block. So let's work with numbers we know.
- Diagonal of the block is the hypotenuse of a 5.5" square. You can use this calculator here and multiply the result by .5 (or divide by 2). Or you can do it the old fashion way.
- The formula is (a squared + b squared) = c squared. To solve we square A and Square B get the sum of that. Then calculate the square root.
- As we are working with squares for our star blocks, a and b are always equal in our star calculations and equate to the finished block size. 5.5" = a and 5.5" = b.If you have excel, you can use this formula:
- =ROUND((SQRT((+5.5*5.5)+(5.5*5.5))*0.5)*8,0)/8 N= the size of the finished block (5.5" in our example)--so you would want to put your block size in a cell and then point to it in the formula.
- I was rounding to get to the nearest 8th inch which is the other stuff. The blue highlight is taking the square of each side (5.5 in this case) and adding them together and taking the square root of the answer. 5.5 x 5.5 = 30.25 30.25x2=60.5. The square root of 60.5 is 7.778174593.
- 7.778174593 represents the full diagonal of your finished block. We need 1/2 of that measurement or 3.889087297. As our quilting rulers don't have such minutia, the formula is going to round to the nearest 1/8 of inch or 3.875.
- Now we can compute the length of square 1: Subtract 3.875 from the finished block size (5.5)= 1.625. Because we need seam allowances for our square, we need to add .5" to that number. Therefore our 4 corner squares will be cut at 2.125" (1.625 + .5). One key block down!
- To calculate we will take the finished block size, subtract the two corner squares (2 x 1.625). or 5.5-3.25=2.25. To add seam allowance, we add 1.25" to get a total square of 3.50 which we will cut into quarter square triangles. Second key block down.
3.Diamonds: Once you calculate the width of the diamond (measurement of the parallelogram, not the points), you can cut the diamonds from strips. The width of our 5.5" block has 2 corner triangles and 2 diamonds. So, the width of a single diamond, is going to be 5.5-2*1.625 or 1.125. Math check 1.625 + 1.625 + 1.125 + 1.125 = 5.5 Yeah...all of our components add up to the width of our block. Because we need seam allowance for the diamond, we need to add .5" so that our diamond width will be 1.125+.5 or 1.625
I do not attest to the accuracy of the table below. (on 09/06/2021 I compared my table to EQ8 computations which I did not have at the time. I have since updated the table below which you can use with confidence. However, if you press your seams over (v. opening them), you may need a scantier 1/4" seam than you are used to using. I had to go over one more needle click on the Bernina (2 v. 1). Make a test block to ensure that you get a trimmed size 1/2 larger than finished).
| Make a Test and use SCANTIEST 1/4" | |||
| Lemoyne Star Block Sizes: Cut Sheet for Components | |||
| Calculated finish (math + EQ8) | Corner Squares | Diamond Width | Square for QST |
| Seam Allow (incl) | 1/2 | 1/2 | 1 1/2 |
| Yield | 4 | 8 | 4 |
| 23 | 7 2/8 | 5 2/8 | 10 6/8 |
| 22.5 | 7 1/8 | 5 1/8 | 10 5/8 |
| 22 | 7 | 5 | 10 3/8 |
| 21.5 | 6 6/8 | 5 | 10 1/8 |
| 21 | 6 5/8 | 4 7/8 | 10 |
| 20.5 | 6 4/8 | 4 6/8 | 9 6/8 |
| 20 | 6 3/8 | 4 5/8 | 9 4/8 |
| 19.5 | 6 2/8 | 4 4/8 | 9 3/8 |
| 19 | 6 1/8 | 4 3/8 | 9 1/8 |
| 18.5 | 5 7/8 | 4 3/8 | 8 7/8 |
| 17 | 5 4/8 | 4 | 8 2/8 |
| 16.5 | 5 3/8 | 3 7/8 | 8 1/8 |
| 16 | 5 1/8 | 3 7/8 | 7 7/8 |
| 15.5 | 5 | 3 6/8 | 7 5/8 |
| 15 | 4 7/8 | 3 5/8 | 7 4/8 |
| 14.5 | 4 6/8 | 3 4/8 | 7 2/8 |
| 14 | 4 5/8 | 3 3/8 | 7 |
| 13.5 | 4 4/8 | 3 2/8 | 6 7/8 |
| 13 | 4 2/8 | 3 2/8 | 6 5/8 |
| 12.5 | 4 1/8 | 3 1/8 | 6 3/8 |
| 12 | 4 | 3 | 6 2/8 |
| 11.5 | 3 7/8 | 2 7/8 | 6 |
| 11 | 3 6/8 | 2 6/8 | 5 6/8 |
| 10.5 | 3 5/8 | 2 5/8 | 5 5/8 |
| 10 | 3 3/8 | 2 5/8 | 5 3/8 |
| 9.5 | 3 2/8 | 2 4/8 | 5 1/8 |
| 9 | 3 1/8 | 2 3/8 | 5 |
| 8.5 | 3 | 2 2/8 | 4 6/8 |
| 8 | 2 7/8 | 2 1/8 | 4 5/8 |
| 7.5 | 2 6/8 | 2 | 4 3/8 |
| 7 | 2 4/8 | 2 | 4 1/8 |
| 6.5 | 2 3/8 | 1 7/8 | 4 |
| 6 | 2 2/8 | 1 6/8 | 3 6/8 |
| 5.5 | 2 1/8 | 1 5/8 | 3 4/8 |
| 5 | 2 | 1 4/8 | 3 3/8 |
| 4.5 | 1 7/8 | 1 3/8 | 3 1/8 |
| 4 | 1 5/8 | 1 3/8 | 2 7/8 |
| 3.5 | 1 4/8 | 1 2/8 | 2 6/8 |
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