Free Carpenter Star Quilt Pattern with a Darling Border

Sew a beautiful Carpenter’s Star Quilt Pattern! The Carpenter’s Star is a traditional quilt design that uses half square triangles. This simple and free quilt pattern from SewCanShe is a medallion quilt that has the Carpenter’s Star at the center and a cute border too. There are no Y-seams. It is an easy throw quilt pattern that you can sew in a day!

This blog post has been converted to an optional PDF that’s optimized for printing. Find it here. The free Carpenter Star Pattern is included in the blog post below and is totally free to read, print, and sew! Just hit CTRL +P on your computer to print. The Optimized for Printing PDF download for $2 is totally optional. Did you know you can get ALL the Optimized for Printing PDF files organized in a library for you to access anytime you want? Check it out.

How big is this Carpenter’s Star Quilt Pattern?

This square Carpenter’s Star Throw Quilt Pattern has a finished quilt size of 66” x 66”. This is a good size for snuggling up on the couch, making a baby quilt, or gifting to charitable organizations.

Instead of making lots of carpenter’s star quilt blocks, this pattern makes one large carpenters star medallion.

The center medallion is made up of 6” half square triangles (HSTs) and squares. It is 48” x 48”. Don’t you love the pinwheel center? Then there are 3 borders added to the center. The first 3” border uses background fabric. Then there’s a fun 3” wide border that uses squares and rectangles from your print fabrics. And finally there’s another 3” wide background fabric border.

It would be easy to make the quilt a larger size by increasing the size of the final border or adding additional borders.

If you love to use your AccuQuilt fabric cutter like I do, I’ll share the optional cutting die numbers to make this pattern Accuquilt-friendly. Using an Accuquilt is optional, but I love it! See all my Accuquilt-friendly quilts. Look under the cutting dimensions below for a list of fabric-cutting dies you may use instead.

How to Choose Fabrics for this Quilt

Since I want you to love every quilt that you make using my patterns, I love sharing tips for choosing fabrics that will make your quilts sparkle and shine!

For this particular quilt, I recommend choosing three beautiful bold prints that look good together. In my quilt, I picked dark blue, dark pink, and medium pink fabrics. You could choose a beautiful ‘focus fabric’ that really speaks to you, and then choose two other fabrics that coordinate with it.

I recommend picking a background fabric that provides good contrast against the three main fabrics that you chose. My background fabric is a white on white print.

Your background fabric doesn’t have to be white or cream color. Wouldn’t this quilt be gorgeous with a dark background instead?

If you follow these instructions for choosing your fabrics, you can’t go wrong. You only need to chose 4 fabrics: 3 coordinating prints for the medallion and cute border and then a contrasting blender or solid fabric for the background.

Free Carpenter’s Star Quilt Pattern

This free quilt pattern includes a shortcut technique for making 6” (finished) half square triangle (HST) units. All of the rest of the pieces are squares, rectangles, or border strips. Optionally, you can cut all of the HST triangles, squares, rectangles, and strips using AccuQuilt dies. To be safe, plan for extra fabric if you are using AccuQuilt dies (1 yard of each of the prints, 3 yards of background fabric). The die numbers are indicated below.

The finished throw quilt is 66” x 66”.

You will need:

• 3/4 yard dark blue fabric
• 3/4 yard dark pink fabric
• 3/4 yard medium pink fabric
• 2 3/4 yards of background fabric
• a rotary cutter acrylic ruler, and mat
• sewing machine
• thread (I suggest thread matching the lighter fabric)
• ironing board and iron
• pencil or fabric marking pen

To sew the quilt top into a finished quilt, you will also need:

• 4 yards of backing fabric (or enough to piece together a 72” x 72” quilt back)
• a piece of quilt batting at least 72” x 72”
• 1/2 yard of binding fabric

Cutting:

From the dark blue fabric, cut:

• 4 squares 7” x 7”
• 4 squares 6 1/2” x 6 1/2”
• 20 squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”
• 4 rectangles 3 1/2” x 6 1/2”

Optional Accuquilt cutting instructions:

• Instead of cutting 7” squares, cut 8 6” finished HST triangles with die 55001 (in the 12” Qube set)
• The 6 1/2” squares may be cut with die 55000 (in the 12” Qube set)
• The 3 1/2” squares may be cut with die 55701 (in the 12” Qube set)
• The 3 1/2” x 6 1/2” rectangles may be cut with die 55724 (in the 12” Qube set)

From the dark pink fabric, cut:

• 12 squares 7” x 7”
• 24 squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”

Optional Accuquilt cutting instructions:

• Instead of cutting 7” squares, cut 24 6” finished HST triangles with die 55001 (in the 12” Qube set)
• The 3 1/2” squares may be cut with die 55701 (in the 12” Qube set)

From the medium pink fabric, cut:

• 12 squares 7” x 7”
• 24 squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”

Optional Accuquilt cutting instructions:

• Instead of cutting 7” squares, cut 24 6” finished HST triangles with die 55001 (in the 12” Qube set)
• The 3 1/2” squares may be cut with die 55701 (in the 12” Qube set)

From the background fabric, cut:

• 16 squares 7” x 7”
• 16 squares 6 1/2” x 6 1/2”
• 12 strips 3 1/2” x 42” (for the borders)

Note: the twelve 3 1/2” strips will be pieced together to make borders. You may wait to cut those strips until it is time to make the borders.

Optional Accuquilt cutting instructions:

• Instead of cutting 7” squares, cut 32 6” finished HST triangles with die 55001 (in the 12” Qube set)
• The 6 1/2” squares may be cut with die 55000 (in the 12” Qube set)
• The strips may be cut with the 3 1/2” strip cutter die 55032

Quilt Piecing

Use a 1/4’’ seam allowance and a regular stitch length such as 2 – 2.5.

How to Sew the Carpenter’s Star Quilt

Make 44 Half Square Triangles (HST’s)

1. Use the pencil or fabric marking pen to draw a diagonal line across the wrong side of all of the 7” background fabric squares. This is a cutting line. You will use 10 of the squares now, and the other 6 next to make dark pink/background fabric HSTs.

Place 10 of the 7” background fabric squares right sides together with 10 of the 7” medium pink fabric squares. Pin the squares together.

2. Sew 1/4’’ away from the cutting line on on both sides of the line.

3. Cut each piece in half diagonally along the line. Open and press to make 2 half square triangles (HST units). Trim each HST to 6 1/2” square. Repeat to make 20 medium pink/background fabric HST units.

4. Use the 6 remaining 7” background fabric squares and 6 dark pink 7” squares to make 12 dark pink/background fabric HST units.

5. Use the 4 dark blue 7” squares together with 4 dark pink 7” squares to make 8 dark blue/dark pink HST units.

6. Use 2 dark pink 7” squares and 2 medium pink 7” squares to make 4 dark pink/medium pink HST units.

In total, you will need:

• 20 medium pink/background fabric HST units
• 12 dark pink/background fabric HST units
• 8 dark blue/dark pink HST units
• 4 dark pink/medium pink HST units

Assemble the Carpenters Star Quilt Center

1. Arrange the 44 HST units, 4 dark blue squares and 16 background fabric squares quilt blocks in the Carpenter’s Star pattern on a large table, a quilt design wall, or the floor.

2. Sew the blocks together to make 8 rows.

3. Sew the 8 quilt block rows together to make the center of the quilt top.

Piece Together and Sew the Second Border

1. The sides of the pieced border each require:

• 1 dark blue rectangle 3 1/2” x 6 1/2”
• 4 dark blue squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”
• 6 dark pink squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”
• 6 medium pink squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”

Arrange those pieces in the pattern shown above and sew together to make a 3 1/2” x 54 1/2” strip. Make 2.

2. Sew these 2 pieced strips to the sides of the quilt top.

3. The top and bottom pieces of the pieced border each require:

• 1 dark blue rectangle 3 1/2” x 6 1/2”
• 6 dark blue squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”
• 6 dark pink squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”
• 6 medium pink squares 3 1/2” x 3 1/2”

Arrange those pieces in the pattern shown above and sew together to make a 3 1/2” x 60 1/2” strip. Make 2.

4. Sew these 2 pieced strips to the top and bottom of the quilt top.

Measure and Sew the Outer Border

1. Piece together six or seven 3 1/2” background fabric strips to make an outer border.

The expected length of the outer side border pieces is 60 1/2”. Measure your quilt top including the first two borders and cut the strips the required length. Attach the side border pieces.

See the correct way to measure a quilt top border. The pieced border prevented us from using this method for the inner (first) border.

2. The expected length of the top and bottom outer border pieces is 66 1/2”. Measure your quilt and cut 2 strips for the top and bottom border. Attach the top and bottom outer border pieces.

Finishing the Carpenter Star Quilt Pattern

1. Cut or piece together a 72” x 72” piece of quilt backing fabric and make a quilt sandwich with the backing, batting, and top.

2. Baste together with fusible batting, pins or basting spray.

3. Quilt as desired. Straight line quilting or cross hatch quilting with your walking foot would be fast and easy.

4. Cut 5 binding strips and bind using your favorite method. This is my favorite quilt binding method.

xoxo,