Carpenter Star
In another life I will own a long-arm quilting machine. In this life I have a wonderful Bernina 820 with a 12-inch throat. As wonderful as it is, when my niece ask me to make her a king-sized quilt for her bed, I knew I was going to have to resort to the quilt-as-you-go method in order to accommodate her request. I had recently finished a queen size for my sister-in-law and knew it was my limit for the traditional sandwich method.
I set out to find a simple pattern so that it would be done in my lifetime and decided on the Carpenter Star pattern. After cruising the internet and not finding a king, I played with it in Electric Quilt 7 and came up with this 120 x 120 pattern. It allows for shrinkage and today’s thicker mattresses.
Since I haven’t seen my niece’s room decor, I decided on a scrappy look using Northcott Stonehenge fabrics and various batik fabrics.
My first round is the center star and ring.
I didn’t want to do a lot of marking for the quilting process so I chose to do a simple pebble pattern in the star points and a paisley, swirl, pebble pattern in the background fabric. I will use this same pattern for all the rounds.
I’m currently working on the second ring and background but taking a break while my Bernina threader is fixed.
I want to make a king size Carpenter Star also. I would love the pattern.
Stephanie
I designed this using Electric Quilt. Since I pulled fabrics from my stash and used a quilt as I went method, the yard ages differed from the program. I’ll pull the fabric measurements and diagram from the program. The entire pattern is fairly simple…half square triangles throughout. Squares were six-inch finished size. I’ll try to post it this weekend for you. 🙂
Here’s a rough version of the pattern: https://hobbystash.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Carpenter-Star.pdf
Wow! Thank you for posting! This is awesome! I’ve been searching everywhere for just this.
You’re welcome! It’s a fun pattern and I suspect I’ll be making smaller versions of it again.
I love this pattern.Thank you for sharing your personal pattern and measurements. I plan to make it in Americana colors.
I would love to make this for my brother in king size. I also have a Bernina. I am new to quilting. Can you please explain how you do the quilt as you go method of quilting on this project?
This is an excellent question, but one that can’t be easily answered in a comment. I’m going to answer it in a blog post for you. It will take some diagrams and pics so give me a day or so. I will explain what I did and what I would do differently as well as why. If you are going to attempt a king on your Bernina, and it can definitely be done in sections, you’ll need a table of some sort to the left of you and your machine that will carry the weight of the quilt as you add each section. I used cotton batting and the baby gets pretty darn heavy by the time you’ve added the last section.
I’m redoing the pattern of you’d like to follow along. My latest pattern draft is here: https://hobbystash.com/gallery/quilts-gallery/quilt-as-you-go-king-size-carpenter-star-finished/
I love your quilt and quilting!
This quilt is amazing, and also one that had been on the top of my list to try. I also have a Bernina 930, and have the same problem. Am looking forward to following along and making this king size quilt. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise.