Sunburst quilt block

Sunburst 

March 5, 1933-"A block containing so many small pieces in such a complicated arrangement is, of course, difficult for the beginner" wrote Nancy Cabot when describing today's block, the Sunburst block.  I agree completely.  This block almost got the best of me!

Nancy suggested piecing this block "in warm colors shading from the flaming reds to the rich golden rays of the sun" which is appropriate for what it's name suggests.  I, however, do not have any suitable vintage fabrics in those colors so I chose to do mine in shades of blue.

Because of the tiny size of the pieces in a 6" block, I paper pieced my block.  It goes together fairly easy but there are a lot of pieces!  The center is another matter.  I think it needs to be appliqued on, probably by hand.  I was trying to finish it quickly and fused the center on but I'm not real happy with how it turned out.




These are the basic units of the block except the corners which didn't make the photo-

And this is what you get ( at right) when you sew all the paper pieced units shown above together.  This new unit is one-fourth of the block.

You also need to add the corner unit at this point which I totally forgot about and meant tearing the block apart to insert the corners.  Not fun! I had to draw my own corner to get it to fit right as you will see on the pattern.  I made it oversized so that the block can be trimmed to 6 1/2".  Be sure to clip the curve of each corner piece to help ease it in.  The sides of the circle actually come right up to the seam allowance!  I wonder how Nancy Cabot envisioned using this in a quilt.

You can download the pattern here.

Tomorrow-Tiger Lily



Here's a recap of the blocks for the last week-

Swastika	Improved Nine Patch	Arrowheads
Eight Point Star	Tulips	Square and Compass