I love the look of a carpenter square quilt but hadn't yet made one and was on a mission to use up some of the scrap material I had laying around! This project tackled both! I started by mapping out the carpenters square pattern on graph paper (the "old fashioned way" I'm told) and then debated sizes.
I decided that with borders I wanted to aim for approximately 80" square so the squares that make up the star ended up being 6 1/2" unfinished. I began by cutting out the scraps and making all the half-square triangle, have I mentioned I am not fond of HST's...but I did it and got them out of the way. After playing with many options for the borders I liked the idea of having it "framed" by a border and so a plan was born!
To quilt, I chose to do an all over spiral and after practicing on paper, since I had only used this pattern as an accent on one other quilt, and I was pleased with how it came out. There are definitely areas where I needed to slow down or watch myself because I ended up with pointy spots but I am very happy with my Scrappy Carpenter Star!