Free Quilt Pattern Grand Star Review

The Free Quilt Pattern Grand Star from Robert Kaufman is a fabulous, large scale, quilt that looks amazing when finished! I’ve got some major tips for you to make this pattern so much easier! Plus a final review of the pattern itself.

First of all you need the pattern. You can find the link to it right here. Grand Star Quilt Pattern by Robert Kaufman. Just click on “download more info” to get yours! Thanks Robert Kaufman!

Image from Robert Kaufman’s website and link above to the free pattern.

This quilt is almost entirely made from HST’s. That’s Half Square Triangles if you are a newer quilter. The pattern designer asks us to cut all triangles for this and personally I think that is insanity! Triangles are notoriously difficult to work with because of being cut on the bias they can get misshapen quite easily. Of course they are not impossible to work with by any means, but there are amazing HST shortcuts that we can take to make life so much easier.

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I’m going to show you the shortcut method I took to get the look of the Grand Star variation that I made. I have some fantastic Mastering Methods – HST Shortcuts for you in my Free Resource Library! Simply sign up (link in the menu at the top of this page) and get a password emailed to you. Then you can gain access to all my goodies!

My variation using only 3 colors for the star. (Actually 2 – my two reds are so close together they are like the same color)

Special thanks to Quincy, my daughter and partner with Quilting Rebel Membership, at Quincy Light – Modern Quilter for the fabulous edge to edge long arm quilting! www.quincylight.com

While looking at my tips and tricks for this pattern, keep in mind that you can vary your colors much more than I did! I wanted to give this 3 color (really only two, since my two reds are so closely related) star a try to see what it would be like. You may choose to go scrappy like the designer did or keep it neat and perfect with a specific color layout. No matter what you choose, my HST shortcuts are sure to help! Don’t forget, you can find these sheets located in the Free Resource Library.

These are images of the PDF pages for my Grand Star Tips & Tricks. If you want to download the PDF pages themselves, you can find them in my Free Resource Library. You can get signed up with your email, and a password will be sent to you! My Mastering Methods sheets will be of great help to you as well for all your quilting needs!

My overall review of this pattern is mixed but overall good. I really feel like expecting a quilter to cut all triangles and a pattern that does not include basic HST shortcut methods, is a bit of a miss. However, I do realize they were going for a very scrappy look to showcase the variety of Kona for this particular promotion. I feel that the 4 at a time method surely could have been incorporated or added as a side note/variation. So it gets a 8 out of 10 from me for being written for it’s intended use. But you can make this quilt – YOUR WAY!