Giveaway starts today -- Accuquilt Go!Baby and fabric, too!!

Update: November 29, 12:01 AM   This giveaway is now closed.....winners will be announced on Tuesday after my first cuppa coffee!

The long awaited day is here! We're starting our giveaway, and one lucky ducky winner will receive an Accuquilt Go! Baby fabric cutter, three dies of their choice, and a layer cake of delicious fabric from the Green Fairy Quilts online store!

Whew! That was a mouthful! Let me grab my cuppa tea and we'll get this show on the road!

First I'd like to show you the tutorial that I made just for you special Lilypadquilters --- the Roanoke Star tabletopper!  Why is it called that? Well, I used to call Virginia my home, and there's a little mountain town there called Roanoke, where a huge neon star has been shining from the top of Mill Mountain since it was first illuminated in 1949. It's huge --- over 88 feet tall! Here's a picture to give you an idea of the size:

And here is what it looks like, all lit up and shining in the night:

So my table topper, even tho the star is a little differently shaped, is my tribute to a wonderful landmark that I remember seeing as a child.

Ready to begin?  I do need to warn you --- this post is full of pictures for the tutorial, so hang in there and stay with me till the end, OK?
First thing you want to do is get out your fabulous Accuquilt Go!Baby and cut some scrappy 3.5 inch half square triangles . . .

Some equally scrappy chisels . . .

And then some half square triangles out of what you might think of as a "background" fabric. You want a pretty sharp contrast between your other die cuts and these.

What? You don't have a Go! Baby?  Hmmmm, we'll have to take care of that later!

Next, take your background HSTs and match them up with your darker HSTs, right sides together:

Sew them in a scant quarter inch seam, and finger press them open, like so:

Aren't they cute?
Now you are going to sew them together with your scrappy chisel shapes, but I'm warning you --- danger ahead! You will have to be careful how you place these right sides together, because if you are grooving to Jingle Bell Rock and not staying focused, your unit will look like this:

Ask me how I know. Well, don't, actually. Just pay attention to yours; you don't want it to look like a pyramid drawn by a tipsy Egyptian architect . . .
You want your completed unit to look like these:

You will actually need eight of these bad boys, and if you want to make them up ahead, that's cool. I made the star in four blocks, and just did these units as I went.
Now, if you want to work with your units and see how they will play together, you can do that now . . .

When you are happy with them, go back to that background fabric, and cut a 6.75 inch square from it --- I like to be a little generous and then go back and square things up.  Cut it in half diagonally, and take one triangle and bring it over to one of your parallelogram units:
You want to match up the sides that you see here in the picture (please excuse the chubby finger). Don't get freaked out because the corner of that triangle extends further than you think it should --- it will all turn out OK. (By the way, a big "thank you" to Sharon of Vrooman Quilts, for her tips on the size of these triangles!)

Now, put these pieces right sides together, pin, and sew!

Make another unit just like the first, and you can lay them out to see what they will look like. Aw, go ahead and sew those together! 

You now have your first block for your star!

A word to the wise here: I found it helped immensely to starch my 6.75 inch squares before cutting them into triangles. They held their shape while I sewed that bias (gasp!) seam.
Now, make another one of these blocks:

. . . and sew it to the first block, to make half of your star. Repeat to make the other half, and then join the two halves of the star.

Now, we're not finished. We want to make a border! Let's get out the Accuquilt cutter again, and make some more HSTs! (This Go!Baby really cranks my tractor --- I've had so much fun with it!) You want some background triangles, and then pick another contrasting color. I was still in my holiday stash, so I chose a pretty holly print:

This time, you are going to chain piece these like so:

. . . and then pin that border, right sides together with your star:

So when you open that out, and iron it carefully, you will be ready to join the borders on the corners, much like you would a mitered border. You'll fold your whole star and the borders on the diagonal, and sew those border edges together.

Then when you open it out, your corners will look like this:

(Trumpet fanfare) And this is what your finished Roanoke Star will look like!

I'm going to hand-quilt mine, and add a narrow red binding. Then it will sit on our table and look festive! At a finished size of twenty-two inches square, it is a super size for a tabletopper, all by itself. But you know me, I can't miss an opportunity to show you how I used it on OleFrogEyes design wall! Look at the awesome secondary patterns this block makes!

Now I can hear what you are saying . . .  this is all very nice, but let's get to the important stuff!

Alright! Your wish is my command --- today the entries begin for the giveaway.   And here are the prizes in this bodacious package!

First on our list, an Accuquilt Go! Baby die cutter!  Whoooo hoooo!

Next on the list, three dies to use in that wonderful Accuquilt machine! That's why I told you to check out this link and this one, and be ready to tell us which three dies you would choose!

Last but not least, some fabric to use with your new cutter! Feast your eyes on the prize that the Green Fairy Quilts store is going to ship to our winner! 

It's the new line by Cosmo Cricket, called Chemistry! Hoppy froggies! A layer cake of yummy fabric goodness, with absolutely no calories or carbs! 

Here is what you can do to enter our giveaway:  

     

           1. Leave a comment telling us what three dies you'd choose with a Go! Baby.
           2. We love our followers, so if you follow here, leave a comment and tell us.
           3. Click on the button on the left-hand sidebar of our blog, and
              get  the free patterns from Accuquilt in your in-box. If you've
             done it before, you can do it again. Leave me a comment and tell me
              that you did. You will also receive occasional emails with awesome
              tutorials and tips from Accuquilt bloggers - some of them are
             geniuses with those cutters!
          4. Go to the Accuquilt Facebook page and click to "like" them,
              but they've asked for me to tell everybody please DON’T deluge
             them with comments there! OK? OK!
          5. Click here to go to Green Fairy Quilts and sign up for their
              newsletter, and leave me a comment that you did (or that you
              already do).
          6. If you are just having dee-duck fits to get your hands on one of
              these babies, then you can tweet or post this on your facebook page
             and leave me a link to say that you did.
          7.  Check out the Green Fairy Quilts PrePurchase section, and tell me which
              one of the lines coming in December has caught your eye.
          8. Are you still reading? Are you a blogger? You'll be glad you are
             still with me here - if you post our giveaway on your blog, you will
             get an extra entry for the cutter AND BE ENTERED INTO A
            SPECIAL DRAWING . . . wanna see what you can win?

           It's a charm pack of Chemistry, by Cosmo Cricket -- our generous sponsors, the folks at Green Fairy Quilts, have said they'll provide this yummy charm pack for the blogger that we pick from that special drawing!  So if you help us spread the word, leave a comment and tell us - and you'll be in that drawing!

Now, I know that some of us are already preparing for Thanksgiving; there's a lot of baking and defrosting and prepping going on. So, we are going to leave this giveaway open for a week --- it will close at midnight (Eastern) on next Monday, November 28, and we'll announce winners on Tuesday! That way everyone has time to enter as many times as they would like to!

Well, there you have it --- lots of ways to get entries into the drawing. And one of you lucky peeps is going to win an Accuquilt cutter, three dies, and some fabric! Hoppy froggies!

Let the commenting begin!!

Love,