Drafting for the Creative Quilter

8-POINTEDSTARBLOCkS 59

Castle Wall Block

You will need five shapes to piece this

block: a square, triangle, diamond,

trapezoid, and pie-shaped wedge.

TO DRAFT A 6 ̋ (FINISHED) BLOCK:

1. Draft a 6 ̋ LeMoyne Star (page 54); do not erase any lines.


2. Connect A to B across the 4 corners.


3. Label the intersections inside each diamond 1–8.


4. To create the center octagon, use your red pencil to
   connect 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 to 8 to 1.


5. Use those same intersections to create the pie-shaped
   wedges. With your red pencil, connect 1 to 5, 2 to 6, 3
   to 7, and 4 to 8.


6. To create the 8 small diamonds, you must determine
   the midpoint between the outer tips of the diamonds
   positioned at the A and B points around the edge of the
   square and the opposite tip, which corresponds to the
   8 corners of the octagon. To do that, work clockwise
   from the top to connect each A to the next A and each
   B to the next B. This creates 16 new intersections, each
   denoted by a dot.


7. To create 2 sides of the 8 squares and the 2 remaining
   sides of the 8 diamonds, use your blue pencil to connect
   each octagon corner (1–8) to 2 intersections.


8. With your orange pencil, connect 2 dots to create
   the 8 squares and to reveal the last shape, the trapezoid.

B

B

A

81

2

3

5 4

6

7

B

A

A

B

A

Draft a LeMoyne Star. Connect A’s and B’s. Label and connect

the intersections. Use different colors for Steps 4–8.

9. Erase all unnecessary lines, leaving only seamlines.

Drafting Using a Handheld Calculator

Although you can draft 8-pointed star designs using

graph paper, pencil, compass, and rulers, as described on

pages 44–59, you can also draft a variety of 8-pointed

star designs using a calculator. When drafting these

designs with graph paper and pencil, you choose the size

of the block and then draft the design within that space

to determine the size shapes needed to sew the block.

When drafting using a calculator, however, you still

make the same choices of block design and block size,

but rather than draft the entire block, you calculate the

size of the shapes needed and then draw those shapes

on either 8- or 10-to-the-inch graph paper. Seam allow-

ances (1/4 ̋) are then added to all sides of each shape.

When using a calculator, the results will be in decimals.

Refer to the Decimal Equivalent Chart (page 68) to con-

vert decimals to fractions.

To illustrate the basics, let’s start with the most elemen-

tary 8-pointed star, the LeMoyne Star block. It is

drafted from eight equal 45° divisions of a circle (pie-

shaped wedges), radiating out from the center (360° ÷ 8

= 45°), not on a grid of equal divisions across and down

the block as described in the grid-based drafting cat-

egory (see pages 10–11). The divisions that fit along the

outside edge of the LeMoyne Star block are not equal,

but the distance between the star points is equal.

The three shapes that create the LeMoyne Star block

are a square, a 45° diamond (a true diamond has four

equal sides), and a triangle (which is the diagonal half

of the square). By looking at the block, you can see that

these three shapes have a relationship—the side of the

square, the side of the diamond, and the two short sides

of the triangle are the exact same size. Therefore, if you

know the size of the square, you know the size of the

diamond and triangle.

N o t e q u a l

E

q

u

a

l

LeMoyne Star block