Made with Oakshott

Hi I am Emily from over at Strawberry Patch Ramblings. I just need to say this straight off I. LOVE. OAKSHOTT.  From the moment I first got my hands on some at the Fat Quarterly Retreat in London last year I fell in love. They have such gorgeous colours that almost make it feel like the fabric is a living substance, combine that with the dreamy hand (which co-incidentally compliments one of my other passions, Liberty Tana Lawn, so well) and I was smitten!

When Lynne and Michael gave me the chance to play with one of the stunning new F8 packs I was over the moon and immediately knew what I would do with it, the beautiful colours were just shouting out Lone Star to me, a design I have wanted to try for some time and I couldn't resist pairing some pretty Liberty prints up with the Oakshotts to bring out the colours.

oakshott and liberty

After playing with the pretty fabrics in my stash and matching the prints up with the solids it was time to settle down to some hard maths! (well hard for me as I have never liked maths, I often wonder why I am drawn to a craft that has it at its heart lol!)

Each Oakshott F8 measures 23 1/2" x 9 3/4". As there where 12 colours in the bundle I decided to use 11 of them for the biggest Lone Star layout I could get and use the 12th as a border for the star along with the Liberty Tana Lawns.

I made up a sketch of one of the diamond segments that would make up the 8 sections of the Lone Star, noting which fabric went where

lone star musings

As you can see I used this sketch whilst making my star to check off which colour I had added as I went along, hence the strike throughs on the numbers, it was very helpful!

From the mock up I was able to work out the following cutting plan:

oakshott lone star cutting plan

As you can see from the above I would need the most strips from colour 6, so I used the width of my F8th (9 3/4") to work out that the maximum strip width I could use would be 1.5" to yield 6 strips. This strip width makes the star as large as it can be from a F8th pack. If you were to use a FQ pack you could double this width to 3" but would have to cut double the quantity of strips to make your diamonds.

Just a little more math and we'll be ready to cut! So I will have strips 1 1/2" x 23 1/2" which when sewn together will need to be offset by 1 1/4".

Once the strips are sewn together they are then subcut into 1 1/2" strips, cutting 8 strips from each set of colours.

At this stage I found it useful to label my Oakshott colours with the relevant number, as the colours graduate so closely it would have been easy to cut the wrong one by mistake!

cutting organisation for oakshott lone star

I used tape on my table to layout the Oakshotts in order, along with my sketch to work through to keep me in check!

Working through your plan sewing 1 row of the sketch at a time you will end up with 6 sets of strips all sewn together. 

Oakshott strip sets sewn together
(These strips have already started to be subcut, yours will look slightly different I just forgot to take a photo!)

Row one is composed of colours 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 then row two has colours 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Row three is made up of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 row four has colours 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Row five is made from 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and finally row six is colours 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

NOTE: take care when pressing the blocks not to distort the fabric.

Now you need to subcut each set on a 45 degree angle into 8 strips of 1 1/2". Line up the 45 degree mark on your ruler with the straight edge of your fabric and trim off the pointy edges to give you a straight edge to begin cutting your strips (you can see in the above photo one edge has been trimmed and the other has not).

Using the 45 degree mark continue cutting, making cuts of 1 1/2" until you have 8 strips, repeat for all sets,  you will have 6 piles of strips all containing 8 strips.

Strips all cut

Now you need to sew them together in the above layout, lay two strips right sides together taking care to match up and pin the diagonal seams, I found it helped to mark 1/4" in from the raw edge on each strip and match these up and pin through the marks.

Sewing strips together


Continue and sew all strips together to give you 8 diamonds.

oakshott lone star progress

Once you have completed all the diamonds you can add borders, I used strips of liberty 1" wide. For the first border I cut them 10" in length and for the second border 13".

liberty border

Once the border is sewn on trim it in line with the edge of the diamond.

liberty border trimmed

Add the second border then trim in the same manner.

second border

I repeated this for all 8 diamonds then added 1" strips of the final Oakshott colour (the 12th one held back at the beginning) to frame the star.

oakshott borders on

Now cut eight 12" squares from your background solid and cut diagonally across the center into HST. Lay them out around the star as shown in the below photo.

adding background

First sew the background triangle to the appropriate side of the Oakshott diamond, once all the diamonds have both background pieces attached you can begin to sew the diamonds together!

I like to sew mine in pairs, then join two pairs to make a half. Repeat this with the other side, then simply join the two sides. This helps deal with the bulk of the seams and match up those center points. Once your diamonds are all joined to form a star you can trim those background pieces and square up to and add whatever sashing you want. I decided to offset my star so I had lots of negative space for quilting.

Quilt as desired and bind! I used up the trimmings from my strip sets in my binding along with a lot of Liberty!

Oakshott and Liberty binding


Oh, and lots of feathery quilting!

Oakshott Lone Star Finished


Oakshott quilt detail


oakshott lone star quilt

I really hope you have enjoyed my tutorial, and perhaps are even inspired to make your own Lone Star. I would like to give a massive thank you to Lynne and Michael for providing the fabric that inspired me to make this special quilt!

Comments

  1. I love this emily! Gorgeous colours and i love the space around the star and the scrappy binding!

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  2. That is gorgeous! What a great way to use that fabric. Wonderful!!!!

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  3. This is so beautiful and you finished it with perfect quilting, Emily.

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  4. Gorgeous! Thank you so much for sharing. Getting ready to make a lone star quilt for my20-year-old son, with his input on colors (loved that conversation). Fine then, I just may be falling for this Liberty Tana Lawn fabric.... Did you have to push me over the edge?? Your quilting is exquisite, love the feathers in the star, and the quilted star points between the Oakshott star points.

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  5. Such a stunning use of oakshott, suits the pattern beautifully :-)

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  6. This is gorgeous! I love how the colors fade into one another.

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  7. Gorgeous! And I loved to see the thought process ilustrated in this post.

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  8. Wow, this is fantastic Emily!

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  9. This is absolutely beautiful! I have that same bundle of oakshott that I don't know what to do with. The Liberty is such great touch. Thanks for the inspiration!

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  10. Such a clever lady - must admit the maths bit has put me right off but the fabrics are very gorgeous, thanks for sharing

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  11. Absolutely beautiful - these are the perfect fabrics for this design!

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  12. I am speechless.....Just unbelievably beautiful!

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  13. This quilt is absolutely A-MA-ZING! As soon as Emily mentioned Oakshott Impressions going with Liberty I thought Doh! - why didn't I think of that before?! Absolute perfection.

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  14. Ooh gorgeous, how big is it all finished (yeah I didn't fancy the maths ;) )?

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  15. Absolutely beautiful. The fabrics are gorgeous. Love it x

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  16. That is the most beautiful star I have every seen.

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  17. Uh...WOW. That's beyond pretty, fantastic quilt!

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  18. This really is the perfect thing thing for these impressions! Well done :)

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  19. whoa. that star is spectacular, the colors blend together so beautifully and the whole thing is just so GOOD! way to go.

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  20. What a beautiful quilt. I love how the colors are kind of muted. I envy your talent. Thanks for sharing.

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  21. This is absolutely beautiful. It has inspired me to try one of these lone stars

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  22. Absolutely gorgeous! The combination of the Oakshott and Liberty, I think I'm going to have to try that out. And your quilting just crowns it x

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  23. Absolutely gorgeous! The combination of the Oakshott and Liberty, I think I'm going to have to try that out. And your quilting just crowns it x

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  24. stunning - what a great design and combination of fabrics. You are amazing :-)

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  25. Always knew you were fabulous but this is just gorgeous Emily! Well done and the quilting is great too!

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  26. Whoa, this is amazing!! I love the way the Liberty pops out and the Oakshotts just shine. :D Beautiful work!

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  27. wow Emily, that is amazing! So impressed with your beautiful quilt and all the thought that went in to it - well done!!

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  28. Gorgeous Emily.... that centre just glows......

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  29. Super fantastic Emily!!!! The star is a glowy masterpiece!

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  30. Very pretty. Thank you for the tutorial.

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  31. This is just absolutely stunning!

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  32. A really beautiful quilt well done Emily very inspiring.

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  33. This is absolutely amazing in every respect. I especially like the star echoed in the quilting.

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  34. Totally amazing...I love the use of the Liberty fabric and the quilting is fab. I've got a fat 8th pack of oakshotts, but I can pretty much guarantee that I won't be making anything as good as yours!

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