Folded Star Trivet

I pinned this folded star trivet tutorial a while back and when I saw these non-stick baking pans in turquoise at  my Grocery Outlet,  I got excited enough to make two for Christmas Gifts. 

The first went to Minnesota in my little sis's luggage in November with no photos as it was iffy if I could save myself postage on those pans and get the trivet done in time.

This is the second one. I've ironed out the peculiarities from the original tutorial which has you cut a bazillion 5" circles. This was because they were 'selling' the Go Baby Fabric Cutter and they must have had access only to the 5" die.

There is no need to cut circles. Squares work much better, especially near the 10" diameter edge where coverage was skimpy enough with the circles that a lot of hand sewing was done so the backing wouldn't show. The squares eliminate that hand sewing.

Each square is pressed in half and then folded points to middle to create folded triangles. Lots of pressing.

obviously - the back side

The last squares are 7" square and I lifted them up here so you see the layers underneath.
Those layers are 5" squares.

There are five layers in this star, however, you can make it any amount of layers depending on the size you want.

You do need to do a fair amount of hand sewing on this project but it's not rocket science stitching. Just tack down the points and then baste around the outer perimeter. Repeat for each layer.

When you start the project, you chalk an intersecting set of lines on your black interfacing/stereo cloth. This helps line up your triangle points.
The hardest thing is to put down your measuring tool and just eyeball where the points lie. Going for equal distance here. Then tack them down.

I found this thin black 'stereo' cloth at Fabric Depot and it has come in handy lately.
Very inexpensive but durable.
Just showing you the 'spiderweb' of stitches tacking things down.

Back to here. Once I basted things at the perimeter, I trimmed it all even with the backing. Then I made about 34" of bias tape for finishing. You do want bias as it will be going around the curve.
I made mine 1 1/4"+ wide. I then iron one long side down at 1/4" - helps with finishing and then eyeball and press in half, pretending I hadn't just pressed that quarter inch down.

I take the unpressed side of the bias tape and sew this on with a 1/4" seam. I fudge the ends together so it's one continuous circle using my clover wonderclips to help position the bias tape.
Once sewn, I flip over to the back side and hand stitch it down.

Sometimes, I bite the bullet and use my sewing machine to do this but I wasn't happy with my first trivet so I hand sewed the 2nd one.

No special stitch - just a side-to-side movement of grabbing a bit of item fabric, a bit of bias tape, a bit of fabric, bit of tape, pull needle through. It's mostly invisible and very quick to do.


I didn't use any batting as this is very thick in the middle with multiple layers of cloth. 
You could if you wanted to.

I have a New Year's Resolution in mind and I'm pretty sure I'm doomed to fail. Each time I get out a fashion fabric to sew with, I keep sewing until it's used up.

I did succeed with these: I strip-pieced the remainder of these five fabrics and made four hot pads.


Happy, Happy New Year!!!



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